


Riders on the Storm

by zempasuchil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animalistic Sex, Case Fic, M/M, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 03, Sibling Incest, Wild Hunt, friendly dogs, unfriendly dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:44:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bottled up in a borrowed Sierra Nevada cabin while their father chases demonic omens, Sam and Dean have nothing to do but hunt chupacabras and mess around with each other. It's not supposed to mean anything. When the weeks are over and Sam announces he's leaving for Stanford, everything including their relationship falls apart. Years later, Jess dies tragically and Sam leaves Stanford with Dean to find their dad. Dean is Sam's anchor in the ocean of Sam's grief, but soon Sam starts suspecting that he's holding too close, wanting too much. Meanwhile, Dean has repented of what happened that summer, but deep down neither can shake his less-than-brotherly feelings. When Dean exchanges his soul for Sam's life, Sam is determined not to let Dean die, or let their desires go unresolved. On the trail of the Wild Hunt, during a last-ditch effort to save Dean from hell, the crackling tension between Sam and Dean finally comes to a head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Salty_catfish's fabulous art can be found on her livejournal, here: http://local-colour.livejournal.com/5966.html
> 
> Art link warning: blood, animal cruelty, mild Sam/Dean.  
> Fic warning: Underage (Sam is 17), mention of suicidal ideation.

_"You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me."  
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise_

 

Their dad's investigating some haunting in a town nearby. "Sounds like there's a poltergeist for sure," he tells Sam and Dean over canned chili dinner. "Stories of a ghost train, too. If that pans out we'll have a real haunted town job on our hands."

Still, it's nothing worth them all moving up there for, not as long as the ghost train rumor stays just a story. But then John calls back from a payphone, says the sheriff department's got increased strange animal behavior and a body found in the woods. The critters are more than spooked – that's normal for a haunting, of course, which Sam _knows_ all right, Dad doesn't need to tell them.

"Looks like chupacabras," Dad goes on. Dried up, eyes gone, the sort of mutilation they'd come to expect from cattle when the shriveled rat-dogs (as Sam describes them, or as Dean says, 'hellish chihuahuas') attack in rare packs when the game is plentiful.

"Too far north for a chupacabra," Sam says

But Dad says "What else could it be?"

"Dunno, something, but chupacabra doesn't make _sense_."

Dean grabs the phone. "We'll find out what it is," he says.

"Good boys," says their dad.

Sam sneers, ducking behind his bangs, hating that it still pleases him to hear it.

-

Dad makes the day's drive back and has got a place to stay lined up for all of them after a few calls. It's an old cabin on a lake right up in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not too far from Lake Tahoe actually. Sam's thinking of flashy boats and movie-star cabins half glass and half timber, but then Dad tells them the name of the place.

"Hell Hole Reservoir," he says, and Sam sees Dean pause his gun-cleaning and raise an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Sam says.

"Well, after Jim and I got rid of the poltergeist in it, the owners suddenly didn't want the cabin any more. Not too eager to sell it, either. Superstitious, but honest folk. This was all years ago. Anyway, they say we're free to use it. They got a gasoline generator and old firewood, if it hasn't rotted, but there's running water."

Sam hates this plan. The town they're in now is tiny, but trading this for the middle of the woods? He hates being isolated, but Dean and Dad are fucking looking forward to it.

Dean gives his job two day's notice. Sam wonders at how he doesn't seem to care about his professional cred. "What if you need a recommendation from the guy?"

"Recommendation? Reference? I'm a hunter, not a mechanic. Man, the garage knew I wasn't sticking around. Mikey said he hated to see me leave and if I ever come back in town and need some work to give him a call, which is better than a recommendation. Recommendation, watchoo talkin' 'bout."

Sam rolls his eyes but laughs a little. He's glad to see the back of this town and the only thing he wants to take with him are some stolen library books.

He'd been up to his neck in the town libraries since high school ended and they'd gone on the road again. Due to his reluctance to go out on long hunting trips – after some faking sick too – Sam's spent some hours being Dad and Dean's research gofer at the local library. Shitty, but he felt free after that to read his own books. He had to catch up, was certain Stanford would be full of kids who'd already read and understood Faulkner and Donne and knew Hemingway by heart and had read at least one thing by Dostoevsky. He was working on that one.

Sam knows he won't ever be back in this town, and the county won't hunt him down to claim the books, so he takes out _Lolita_ , more Dostoevsky, a Faulkner novel collection, _This Side of Paradise_ which he fucking loves even though Amory is sort of an idiot. His obsession with becoming someone but achieving nothing is shallow and, as he reads, Sam swears he's going to do something fucking useful with his life. Useful in a way _he_ wants to be useful. Hunting's not the only useful thing in the world.

-

Two days before they're supposed to leave town, Dean crashes his motorcycle. He's lucky to escape with nothing more than a few cuts and bad bruises, hell he's lucky to escape with his life, but Dean winks when the nurse tells him that, in her and Sam's general direction. Their dad is pissed as hell at Dean, didn't give a shit about the bike but can't believe Dean would drive that recklessly, and Dean smarts at the dressing-down he gets. Sam can't help but agree and his fear is replaced with the dull burn of agreeing with Dad. Dean never takes safety seriously and it's gonna end him one of these days.

Of course, to Dean, the bad news is that the bike itself is destroyed.

"Son of a bitch," Dean says when they go to the tow yard to see the wreck of it. "I fixed that thing up and was gonna make a good sale. Now it's a piece of fucking scrap." He leans on Sam now and then, elbow on his brother's shoulder, and Sam props him up when he's wobbling on his sprained ankle.

Sam almost feels bad for him then, but Sam didn't even have a way to get away from this stupid cabin out in the middle of the woods, and now Dean will suffer the same fate as him. But, hell, he'll probably like it, he'll be bagging monsters constantly and making Sam feel like he's got to pick up the slack.

Summer is monster season, the Winchesters have learned, when things come out of hibernation and the heat drives beasts wild and people into wild beasts. Morbid, but true.

Sam hopes they find nothing at all. Usually he'd count on Dean to distract him in between irritating him with his fanaticism, but Dean's ray of sunshine is a little dimmed too now.

"Man, camping" Dean groans. He's lying on his back on the bed, full of advil for his scrapes and sore spots. Sam's packing his duffel; Dean's is packed, if throwing all his newly clean clothes in mashed in a ball counts as _packed_.

"This cabin's better than camping. Camping is a pup tent in the rain," their dad says. Dean chuckles. They remember that.

"Sam smelled like wet dog," says Dean.

"Shut up, jerkface, that was you."

"Boys," Dad warns, which shuts them up.

But then Dad gets some statistics and weather graphs in the mail, which Sam tries to ask him about, except their dad just sweeps them away into a bag and says "Change of plans, boys, I've got some stuff to investigate."

Now and then, whatever news he got, whatever plans he was making, no questions would pry it out of him. Omens, he'd say, and Sam would ask what kind of omens, and John would say weather omens. His tone was one that said he had nothing more to tell them on the matter, and while that would never be enough for Sam, he could see Dean nodding, Dean always nodding along, though Sam knew Dean was already bitter about the loss of his bike - just that much more trapped.

Sam misses Dean's bike too, now. He's sure now he could've convinced Dean to let him borrow the thing. Now they're both gonna be stuck, together.

When they're on the road out of town, Dean leans over the back of the seat and asks him if he brought any Vonnegut.

"No," says Sam.

Dean groans.

He's gonna drive Sam crazy.

-

Dean asks if Dad needs his help more than once, which shows he's anxious to not be stuck in a cabin for weeks. Hey, Sam isn't keen on it either. Dad says, "And what, leave Sam? No, Dean."

"Then Sam can come with."

Sam glares at Dean. That's worse. "Thought I was doing important research, right, Dad?" His tone is, as always, dripping with bitter sarcasm. It's toned down a bit now that he sees the imminent possibility of getting dragged out on what he thinks of as the worst kind of hunt: the kind where you're walking all day and sleeping on cold hard ground at night – in the mountains, cold is freezing cold. And you're spending plenty of time hunting in the dark. No, no thanks. 

Dad says they'll be fine here and they can cover the chupacabra stuff in the woods, they can't ditch a job they already dug up. They're not kids anymore, they can take care of this with a salted and warded cabin to stay in. There's a paved road a couple miles down, and then within a mile in either direction there's an emergency payphone.

He gives them a roll of quarters. "Don't waste these, these are for calls, understood?"

"Yeah, Dad."

Sam grumbles, "Don't know why we couldn't just find somewhere not in the middle of nowhere. Could do research there."

Dad chews him out. They should be thankful, he says. It's good luck that they've got a place to stay that he barely has to pay for, and it's done honestly, too, no breaking and entering. So no one's going to find them up here, and it'll only be as long as this case lasts, which Sam estimates will be too long, three weeks, a month, something awful and interminable. Dean and him'll be stuck tracking something through the mountain woods.

"I'll still be close by, Sam, don't know why you're complaining about time to yourself."

"That's not even close by, you're just going to call us from the road phone"

"No, Sam, you're my boys and you'll be safe up here. These signs I've found… could be big. And it's killed three, probably five people already. It'll be two, maybe three weeks."

Which, Sam glances at Dean, and Dean looks down, means more like a month.

-

They get there in the early afternoon and scope out the place before John heads off. There are wool blankets in a trunk with plenty of mothballs, and the dry mountain air has kept them in okay condition. The cabin is mostly waterproof - there's a place where the roof is a bit crumbled through, nests here and there, so Dean boosts Sam up there on his shoulders while Sam grabs the nests. They're empty but Sam's still careful as he can be. Leaving their scent, they know, probably means no birds will return to them, so they set them in a row outside the cabin.

After Dad finishes taping salt down around the windows and doors, they all go find wood to burn in the stove. They carry kindling, take turns chopping the larger logs into woodstove-sized pieces, till they've got a sizeable pile. 

"Bout enough wood for a week, more if it don't get too cold at night," Dad says. They check over the rest of their supplies: a twelve-pack of D batteries for their flashlights, which have to last the whole time, so keep 'em dry and don't waste 'em. Tinned milk and a can opener, canned green beans, canned corn, canned beans with weenies, a couple jars of peanut butter, a couple loafs of Wonder Bread that'll never get moldy. A couple sub sandwiches they picked up on their way out, that's a treat that'll last them for the next couple days. Then Dad heads out, leaving them to the chirping otherwise-silent woods. 

Sam sighs. Dean goes inside and says "Dibs on the bed!" 

There are two cots in the cabin but they're cheap and had rusted, and by now both Sam and Dean have hit six feet, meaning their calves hang half off. The springs stab them in the back – one canvas rips just as soon as Dean opens it up, the other busts loose a couple springs and a hook on the frame when Sam sits on it.

"Seriously?" Sam whines, his ass sunk down on the side where his hips would rest, old sheet from the closet rumpled halfway over the cot frame.

Dean laughs and Sam gives him the stinkeye. "You expect me to sleep like this?"

"I dunno," Dean says. "We can't _both_ take the bed." He looks at it sidelong, as if it too will probably collapse.

It turns out to be a really comfortable king-sized bed, which is unfortunate, because then they actually have to fight over it.

"King is big enough for two people, come on, Dean."

Dean still looks dubious, so Sam kicks the cot frame gently, hoping a spring will pop out. "Sharing a bed with your brother can't be half as bad as these things. It'll close up on you in the night."

"You mean it'll close up on _you_ in the night."

"No way, I will fucking climb in there with you while you're sleeping. I am not sleeping in these death traps."

"Fine! Fine," Dean huffs, and flops back on the bed. "I'll dump you out if you kick me in your sleep. Hmm. Firm mattress," he muses aloud at Sam and the empty cabin. "The best kind of mattress for summer, besides a hammock."

"Sleeping in hammocks sucks too," says Sam, bouncing on the end of the bed. "At least a cot lets you lie flat. Hammocks elevate your legs and are hard to get out of and give you a crick in your neck."

"What kind of hammock are you thinking of? Cut it out, don't break this bed with your ass too."

"Shut up, I didn't break it - the stupid thing was rusted through."

Dean croons mockingly, _She's a brick … howwwse!_ Sam does a backwards somersault at him and aims a kick at his head, growling, and Dean ducks to the side and smacks Sam's leg away.

At least it's a king. And it's summer, so they don't even spend much time sleeping at night. There's a generator and the full five-gallon gas container to give them some hours of light, though it only really gets dark near nine this time of year, and the after-sunset glow lasts outside maybe till ten if they let their eyes adjust. Plenty of firewood – for the woodstove only, John warns, and so do all the _Fire Warning: EXTREME_ signs along the highway all the way up here.

Dean still plans on using the outdoor firepit, he tells Sam, since he and Sam are smart enough, the trees are far enough off, the ground is cleared and dusty for ten, twelve feet around. They're not going to throw a bonfire or anything. That'd be wasteful. No one will know, no one will go walking across the lake and be able to tell a firepit light from an incandescent bulb. They've got a lot of privacy. Fires are better outside. Sam agrees.

-

When they climb in that first night Sam sees Dean slip his knife under his pillow.

"No way, man."

"What?"

"Not in the bed. It's gonna slip and cut you in your sleep."

"Don't be stupid, Sam."

"YOU don't be stupid!"

"It's never happened before!"

Sam eyeballs him.

"What?"

"Oh come on, even I remember that."

"That was from shaving, shut up."

"Can you just put it under the mattress? You can still reach it quick, just, god, don't knife me in your sleep."

Dean grouches but he complies, then tumbles onto the bed, scratching his belly and yawning.

Sam crouches down to tuck his own knife under the edge of the mattress, handle-out. It's a neat sickle he really likes that Dean got him for a birthday. He's taking that one with him to Stanford as a sort of insurance policy – Dean said he'd ward it for him with some of the stuff Sam found in the Assyrian demonology books. He wants to tell Dean a lot of the time what he's planning for the future, how he got into Stanford on a full ride. He wants someone other than his guidance counselor and Pastor Jim to be proud of him. But that's a little kid feeling; he shouldn't need someone to be proud of him. They should be proud of him, and knowing that should be enough.

This secret feels like it's eaten him up sometimes, though. Like he can't appreciate his last summer all the way, he's just so anxious when he remembers he's secretly leaving and he has to keep it a secret until he breaks the news at the eleventh hour.

He's used to falling asleep with these worries on his mind, so it doesn't take him long to succumb to the peaceful darkness of sleep.

-

They wake up in the nearly cold clear dawn light. Sam rolls over and puts his head under his pillow, and feels Dean do the same. He was having a weird dream. The deer were conspiring, putting their heads together and watching him from a distance. Now it makes no sense.

He drifts off till he feels Dean jostle the bed getting out at some point, even though it's still too early to reasonably be up. Maybe he has to pee. Maybe he's making coffee. How was it you made coffee without a coffeemaker again? Sam's used to motels that come with them or have coffee in the lobby, and when they're camping there's no point in coffee, the outdoors wakes you up. This is a strange in between spot though, and he deserves the luxury of coffee. He knows Dean usually craves it.

Damn it, he's awake now. Pulling a blanket over his shoulders, he wanders to the cabin door and opens it to look outside.

There's Dean, facing the lake, jerking off into the rising sun reflected on the water. Sam thought he was pissing at first but the rhythmic jerking arm movement is unmistakable, framed by the golden morning light. It's fucking picturesque.

He thinks of Faulkner and the so-close-it's-raw intimacy of Quentin and Caddy Compson, of Darl when he knows his sister's secret pregnancy just because she doesn't say anything, how this is something Faulkner write about and pin the bizarre intimate intrusion just right. Sam's not intruding, he's just standing there, like Dean is just standing there. Sam knows he came out there to be alone, and yet Dean's standing there in broad daylight, performing for the empty world before him, the tiny house in the distance. He's a distant observer for a moment, but Faulkner has no distant observers, only interested ones, only twisted and selfish ones. He's really not a distant observer, he's Dean's brother. Of all the unwanted intimacy he thinks he's fleeing, now he wants to take advantage of this moment, just because it's here, because he's earned the right by putting up with claustrophobic family all these years.

Thinking about Faulkner haunts him. So he turns away and maybe Dean knows none the wiser.

When Dean comes in, Sam's got coffee in one hand and is rummaging through the closet. Sam keeps his back to him to give him some privacy.

"Look," he says, pointing at two boxes labeled _books_. "Maybe there's some Vonnegut in there."

"Thank God," Dean says. "No TV and a battery radio with no stations, but at least there's books. Hey, maybe there's sex in some of them."

Sam rolls his eyes as Dean wrestles open the box. Under a couple years' worth of National Geographics there's a stack of romance novels.

"Son of a bitch," Dean says, and Sam cracks up laughing.

"Maybe there's sex in them!" He leans against the wall to hold his stomach.

Dean picks one up. "Yeah, right. These are like PG-13, aren't they?" It's a stroke of luck that Sam's laughing too hard to correct him, which would only start a jag of teasing from Dean, that Sam's read porn for girls.

-

Sam is truly bored with this translating work Dad leaves with him. Akkadian, really? No one knows Akkadian. He spends maybe a total of an hour on it most days when Dean bugs him to by doing his workout indoors. It's gross but Dean says if he works out and Sam does the translating and transcribing, then they just have to spar and they'll be done.

Sam figures he's getting cheated though, since Dean doesn't have to do any of this research crap - "slave labor" he calls it, and Dean rolls his eyes.

After they do all that, Sam takes out his Dostoevsky, and Dean searches through the boxes of warped paperbacks till he finds, miraculously, a copy of _Slaughterhouse Five_. He flaps it around and the pages crinkle. "This lady had better taste than you, Sam," he says, and Sam tells him to shut up. 

Unfortunately the only other non-romance novel is a Tom Clancy one that Dean's read twice and hated both times, so Dean digs through Sam's books.

"Man, there's nothing good here to jerk off to, why the hell would you steal _these_ from the library?" he whines. "I'm serious, all the sex in here is awful. No cable, no Playboys, just National Geographic and fucking Lolita. The Trafalmagorians are my best bet around here, I swear to God," and Sam laughs but Dean still looks disappointed. 

"It's literature," Sam says. "The sex scenes aren't about sex."

"That's just unhealthy," Dean says, and Sam shrugs, because it's kinda more interesting that way. More interesting than a stack of skin mags. "Anyway, I'm not gonna read that Lolita shit," Dean says. 

"Then read the romance novels, I hear they're pretty raunchy."

"You think I'm some kind of housewife who reads romance novels?" but Sam ignores him, keeps at his Fitzgerald. 

"You know, these things do have some good bits," Dean says, paging intently through a book with a long-haired fur-wearing Viking barbarian dipping a peasant girl on it to stare intently into her eyes. "It's better than reading Cosmo for the sex tips, but about the same as Playboy penthouse letters, in terms of the sex. Whoa – hoo, maybe better."

"Whoa there, Dean, can you just… keep that to yourself."

"Whatever, I'm basically pre-screening these for you, I know you're gonna go through them later. This one –" he waves the Viking-covered book, " – this has a pretty nice fantasy twist. I know that gets you going."

"Shut up," says Sam, his face hot now, jabbing his foot out to mock-kick Dean from a ways away.

-

After tramping out as far as they could go all afternoon, and turning back at the midway point, Sam's impressed with how truly out in the middle of nowhere they are. Sam's good with a compass and Dean's good at remembering landmarks, so they get their lay of the place, the hour it takes them to circle the lake, the couple hours it takes to go uphill to the ridge

They find normal animal tracks, some deer, plenty of possum, skunk, raccoon. 

"But hardly any squirrels, did you notice?" Dean asks.

"Huh." They're sitting on some stumps near the fire pit, Sam stretching his legs after the long hike. "Not many large birds either. Maybe the population is on a down-swing."

"We're by the water, of course there would be large birds. No, it's probably some creature hunting, driving them out maybe."

"Sure," Sam says.

Dean doesn't offer up any creature ideas and Sam doesn't ask.

"You wanna light a fire here?" Dean asks, and Sam eyes their limited supply under the tiny lean-to roof.

"Let's try the old stuff, see if it'll catch. We shouldn't waste good stuff indoors. We got matches, right?"

"Yeah, and your library books for kindling."

"Fuck off," Sam says, and Dean flips him off, which is standard but annoying.

All day there's been some sound – birds, wind in the trees, background noise. When it gets to dusk, there's a bit more noise; when it gets dark, though, dead silent. Despite the relative calm and mild excitement of the night before, that second night is when Sam starts thinking of the whole situation as creepy. 

Sam isn't the sort to get spooked by the woods but when the woods already contains monsters, well.  
Sam's anxious about it when it gets too quiet.

The wood is old and the fire barely catches. It only burns two hours from start to finish, with a few rejuvenating attempts in the middle. By then they've had their second sub sandwiches from the cooler – Sam says goodbye to fresh greens and variety for a while – and it's too dark to read, and Sam is ready to pass out.

"I'm turning in," he says, and Dean nods, "mm," staring into the embers.

That night, Sam dreams of reflective eyes, herds of deer wandering towards him while he wants to back away, but he can't move, frozen in place. Sam thinks of deer with round beady black eyes like depthless pools, but these ones are real and the reflected glow flashing here and there comes like someone's shining a light in them. It's the headlight glow you see as you pass in your car on the highway. It's the glance right before impact, or before it leaps over your hood and crashes its hooves through your windshield.

These ones are still far away, but he keeps thinking, _they're getting closer. Don't let them get closer._ He doesn't know why, but when Dean climbs into bed and Sam becomes partly conscious, he's slightly afraid of them at the same time he realizes it's strange to be afraid of deer.

Dean's hand pats his shoulder briefly, like a blind man's touch in the dark, and it reassures still-mostly-asleep Sam in a way he would never let it while conscious.

-

Sam wants to spend the day reading, but Dean tries to convince him to go out with him into the woods.  
Sam doesn't want to.

Dean says, "Well, what the hell are we doing here, then."

Sam snaps at him, "I don't know, so stop bugging me. If you want to go shoot some monsters then go do it."

Dean gives him a hard time – calls him a wimp, a pansy ass, a whiner. "You always have such a shitty attitude about this, Sam."

"Whatever, we've got ages, it's only the second day."

Dean says, "Well then, fight me or call it a day."

Sam looks up at him. Dean's sweating through the pits in his t-shirt. He looks restless as hell. It's a little how Sam feels after the dream last night, but Sam's dealing with his restlessness. He's ignoring it by reading and thinking about Stanford in three more weeks.

Looking at Dean and thinking about Stanford makes Sam kinda feel like shit, like he's getting away with something he's not sure he should.

Dean says, "We could go on a run if you don't wanna fight. Spar, I mean."

Sam blinks. "Yeah, a run." He looks at the lake. "Okay."

So they do, and it gets Sam's mind to shut up for a while, and he can absorb it all – sun, sweat, dry air, pine tree smell, the sound of him and Dean breathing and not much else. When they get back Dean sits down to sharpen his knives, and Sam goes back to being confused about the events of _Absalom! Absalom!_

Dean wanders off into the mountains by himself after that, and gets back when it starts getting dark. When Dean comes back he wants to go night swimming, but clouds have rolled in, and heat lightning flickers inside them.

"I didn't think they had weather like this in California," Sam says.

"Not that I know. Maybe it's a lake effect."

"Huh." It doesn't make sense to Sam, lake effect or anything. But he likes summer storms, and they both know swimming in a tiny lake with lightning is a terrible idea.

So they lie in bed in the cabin's heat and the strange stuffiness of the charged clouds, blankets kicked off, just in their boxers. Sam lies on his side facing away from Dean. Dean doesn't reach out to touch his shoulder tonight.

"Do you hear howling?" Sam asks. It's distant and strange, a yowling bark. Could be a dog or a wolf, though it's much deeper than a coyote's yip. Yelping.

Dean says, after a few seconds, "I don't hear anything."

"There it is again."

"Can't hear it."

Sam sighs and turns his pillow over to the cool side.

-

The next day when they're sniffing out animal tracks in the midday sun – better to find a chupacabra now than get surprised at night, Dean says; or find a den, Sam says, and Dean nods – they hear something in the woods

"Is that a dog?" Sam asks.

Dean shakes his head.

But then Sam hears it again, and a dog comes from over a hillock, walking right up to them, mouth open and panting.

Sam and Dean stare at it.

"You see any dog tracks?" Dean asks

"No," Sam says, and holds out a hand.

"Careful," Dean says, putting a hand on Sam's shoulder to keep him from approaching the dog. They are hunting, sure, but the dog walks up to Sam and sniffs his hand, then whines.

He's weird looking, red-brown ears and a red tail on a white body. Biggish, sorta like a sheepdog, the ones that are black and white, but with different coloring. He's got regular dark brown doggy eyes.

"He looks normal. And he's thirsty," Sam says, and pours a little of his water into his hand for the dog to lick up. "See, his nose is dry."

"You sure that's not rabies?"

"Come on, Dean, he's not staggering or anything. Look, there's a dent where he had a collar. I think he's lost."

Dean ducks his head to look. "You mean she."

"Oh. She, then."

"So _her_ owners can't be anywhere near, can they? There's nobody out here, Sam. Middle of nowhere?" Dean waves his hand indicating the vast empty mountains Sam's been complaining about for days.

"Maybe she wandered around the lake, or from the road. Maybe someone's backpacking out here and she slipped her collar and ran off. Maybe something we've been hunting scared her." The dog pants serenely, despite Sam's defense.

"All right, all right. Well, shoo!" Dean waves at the dog, who is unfazed. Sam makes a face, which Dean sees and rolls his eyes at. "He's gotta go back where he came from."

"He's lost."

"What are you, the dog whisperer?" Dean sneers. "We can't track anything if we've got this pet hanging out with us."

"Then let's head back."

Dean looks at Sam. Sam makes a face.

Dean picks up a stick from the forest floor, waves it in front of the dog a bit to get her attention. The dog looks at him calmly. "You wanna fetch? Go on, fetch!" Dean throws the stick off where the dog came from.

The dog tracks it with his eyes, then looks back to Dean, then sidles up to Sam. Sam laughs and scratches her ears.

"Well it can't be anyone's dog if it doesn't know fetch," Dean complains, and the dog just looks at him.

Sam is still laughing at Dean.

-

Of course, Sam's the one she follows home.

They step inside and Dean heads to the kitchen for lunch, but the dog stops outside, standing stock still till Sam says, "Come on." Then she steps over the threshold and trots into the kitchen where Sam's holding out a piece of lunchmeat. "Come on," Sam says again, and the dog takes the meat and wolfs it down there on the kitchen floor. Of course, then the dog won't leave.

"Great," says Dean after they try to lead it back into the woods. "This sucks."

"You just don't like dogs," Sam says.

"Damn straight."

"She's not even bugging you!"

"Yeah it is, it's gonna eat all our food."

"Not if we get her dog food."

"You got money?"

"Yeah," says Sam. "I'll see if I can hitch somewhere down there… or I'll go around across the lake and see if it's their dog, or if they've seen it before. Or if they're making a grocery run."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. At least make her sleep outside."

Problem is, the dog just won't budge from in front of the woodstove, no matter how Sam cajoles or nudge it gently.

"Fine," Dean says. "It can stay here."

Sam sees him keeping an eye on the dog all night, as if he's afraid she'll walk up and use him as a fire hydrant or make a mess on the bed. Instead the dog just curls up on the tile in front of the empty woodstove.

-

Dean is already up, again, when Sam gets up. Sam's a teenager still, he gets an excuse – he remembers when Dean would sleep inordinate amounts and he'd be the one Dad had to jostle out of bed. Sam himself used to be worse when he was going through his high school growth spurt, but it seems to have basically stopped. He might have gained an inch last year, not quite another this year. He's about as tall as Dean, which rankles Dean, but Sam's still not as filled out so Dean still beats him at most sparring.

Anyway, Dean's not there in the bed when Sam wakes up, and when Sam sits up the springs squeal and the dog at the hearth lifts its head to look at Sam, alert.

Sam had almost forgotten. It's a weird thing, having the dog there. It's nice. "Hey," he says in soothing tones. The dog doesn't look bothered, though. Sam gets up, and the dog stands from its place by the fire and follows him into the kitchen. Sam grabs some Wonder bread from the bag and puts peanut butter on it, no coffee sitting in the pot today so he foregoes it, and gets himself a cup of water from the open five-gallon jug. He feeds the dog a piece of jerky, which the dog wolfs down at Sam's feet. He waits while Sam pets him as Sam eats his peanut butter sandwich.

When Sam gets up to go outside, he calls "Come on, Regina, let's find Dean." Sam's going to call her Regina, because he's always wanted to call a dog Rex, but she's a queen, not a king. But Regina goes back to the fireplace to lie down again.

"All right," Sam says, and walks outside.

Apparently Dean has a schedule, because he's right there, only a couple yards from the cabin door, with his dick in his hand. He's leaning back in one of the deck chairs in his sunglasses, a book in one hand and the other, in the middle of some intense self-loving.

"Whoa!" Sam says, but Dean just goes "What?"

"What? What do you mean, what, you're kind of out in the open here, Dean. Can you just… put that away." Sam pointedly does not look at Dean's dick.

"Why? You interrupted me."

"You're right in front of the cabin with your dick in your hand. Seriously?" Sam tries to saturate his voice with the annoyance he feels right now. 

"The neighbors can't see us, Sammy."

" _I_ can see you!"

"Then don't look at me! Jeez, I'm just over here minding my own business, and you stomp up and tell me to stop whacking it? Who's the perv?"

Sam sees the book Dean's got resting on the chair arm. "You're reading _Long Hard Ride_?" There's a cowgirl on the front giving the reader a come-hither look, with a stomach-baring cropped western-style shirt and some huge pushed-up breasts.

Dean gives Sam the finger. "Yeah, and you would too – though maybe you won't, I may have got something on it." Dean leers.

Sam makes a gagging noise.

"Anyway, it's not like you've never seen any of this before, hell you've touched -" Dean sort of swallows his remark, and Sam stares blankly at him, not getting it till suddenly he _gets it_.

Apparently Dean forgot the memo he issued himself years ago, that they did what they did and don't _talk_ about it. Sam knew it was the sort of shame you don't think about or repeat. _Touched_. What a euphemism. He rolls the word on his tongue still trying to swallow it, then pinches the tip in his teeth and walks back inside.

Sure, Dean's right. But they don't fucking _talk_ about it. It's been years. They've grown out of it, or at least Sam's been counting on that. He's had a serious girlfriend and some real experience under his belt by now. He and Dean don't need any help from each other in that department.

Sam realizes that the hot twist in his gut is more than shame at what Dean brought up. He's kind of turned on now, the thought of jerking off here in the open air where no one could see. He tries to tell himself it's not at the sight of Dean's dick, but the best he can manage is the excuse that responding to something that pornographic is basically Pavlovian in any teenage boy.

-

One day Dean finds a bottle of whiskey in a trunk in a closet, and they decide to get drunk and swim under the light of the three-quarter moon that night. It's not a full moon, they stay in on those nights, reasonably spooked by the noise of the animals and the knowledge that they're not just there for a summer vacation, but a hunt for something deadly out in those very woods. Could be any kind of were-creature out there. It's the responsible move.

They build a small fire in the pit outside and roast some weenies. Dean wishes out loud they had s'mores and Sam says he'd kill for some chocolate. They kick the fire down so the coals are open and let it cool, then Dean pisses on the logs and watches them steam. With the glowing beacon that will stay for a while, they decide to go night swimming. 

Their eyes adjust to the dark once they're out on the water, kicking and splashing at each other, and they race to the island. Sam wins because one year they were in a high school with a pool and he had to take PE, so he took swimming, and he manages to do more than compensate for the fact that he sinks like a stone.

"Rematch!" Dean shouts, and Sam laughs. He'll give it to him.

But then as they're starting off on a race around the island, Sam gouges his shin on a rock. "Fuck!" he shouts, rolling over onto his back and drawing his knee up.

Dean shouts back at him, taunting till he sees Sam's stopped, then heads towards him. Sam sticks his leg up on a rock to see the cut. It's dark so the blood there is barely visible, the dark hairs on his shin standing out strong but the red washed out and streaming down his leg, diluted by the water. Sam swipes at it with his hand as Dean comes closer. He holds his hand up to the moonlight and it's clear that what's washed over his shin is blood, all right, dark and shining wet.

"How big's the cut?" Dean asks, reaching for Sam's calf easily without asking. Sam lets him out of instinct and reflex, like a million hunts they've been on where any of them got hurt, and even before that when Sam was a kid it was half the time Dean who looked at his injury and told him whether to man up or let him fix it.

"Not too bad?" Sam guesses. He hisses when Dean touches it, gently. "Hurts like a bitch."

"Yeah, I bet," says Dean, but he doesn't take his hand away or let Sam's calf go.

"Seriously, it's bruised, stop touching it."

"Eh, you've had worse. Climb out and let it dry."

Sam grunts, sighs. They're sobered but not brought down from the buzz of nighttime swimming. He crawls over the rocks up to the pebbly shore, looks for leaves that aren't stinging nettles or poison ivy to put on his shin. It hurts to press it but pressing is what you have to do.

Dean's grabby, trying to do it himself, but Sam swipes him away. "Get off, you're drunk and sloppy and you're gonna make it worse."

"'m not sloppy. Not a sloppy drunk."

Sam laughs, because Dean's face is belligerent and hilarious in this light. "Yeah you are," Sam says, because it's true. "I have seen you _so_ messy."

Dean's face flushes – more blood seen under moonlight – and says "Shut up."

It's charming. Sam is very charmed by Dean right now, irritated and charmed and glad Dean is there to take his mind off the pain.

"Least it wasn't glass," Dean says, leaning back on his heels.

Sam thinks that he wants to see the stretch of Dean out under moonlight instead of just his chest. They're in their underwear right now, wet underwear, which happens to show a lot and cling and do things that Sam would usually be too embarrassed to look at, but they're both kind of drunk tonight and Dean was jerking off right in front of him just a day ago, so he fucking looks, all right?

Dean, heavy-lidded and lounging, more drunk and less focused, looks back.

"You know I learned how to do lifeguard stuff," Sam says. "That swim class I took. They did some lifeguard stuff in it."

"Oh yeah? Like what? How to run down the beach with your pecs jiggling?" Dean cups himself like he's got boobs and Sam groans.

"Like, unconscious tows, or how to keep someone who's struggling from grabbing onto you and pulling you down. Like if they're drowning, they're gonna climb up and force your head under trying to stay afloat."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, so you're supposed to duck down and go underwater. If you pull them down with you they'll let go because they're freaking out and they don't want to drown."

"That's a shitty thing to do."

"No, then you swim around behind them and pin their arms. Or you wait till they're too weak or unconscious and then you just pull them by the hand."

"That's still pretty shitty."

"You'd do it. Knock someone out for their own good, if you had to save them."

"Wouldn't make 'em think they were drowning."

"They're panicking! They don't even know what's going on"

"Whatever. You give any hot chicks mouth to mouth?"

"That's CPR, Dean, we didn't do that."

"That's stupid, you gotta know how to give mouth to mouth."

Dean looks at Sam and Sam feels belligerent and then realizes Dean is looking at him and glares and turns red. That would be stupid. "Gross, _you're_ not teaching me mouth-to-mouth."

Dean smacks him lightly upside the head. Sam sees it coming and ducks. "Course not. You can figure that out on your own, you like being self-taught. You should show me those holds though, that sounds useful."

"Yeah," Sam says, so they swim out again.

Turns out Dean is really good at struggling – figures he'd give Sam a hard time. They end up wrestling a lot in the water more than having a teaching moment, and manage not to actually drown despite the alcohol. Sam can hold Dean the first couple times but eventually Dean starts breaking his holds, and then says they should switch so he can practice. Of course then Sam's too weak from swimming around all night to break Dean's holds. 

"No fair," he says. "I've lost blood, I'm in a weakened state." Dean laughs.

"You feeling a little faint, Sammy? Need me to tow you to land?"

"Shut up," Sam says, and clings to Dean's back till Dean dislodges him.

-

When they get back, the dog is waiting for them on the shore. They rarely see it out at night; its eyes are strangely bright. Sam barely had the energy to notice, though. He's been wrestling in the water with Dean all night and he's fucking exhausted. Their underwear is soaked and so are they.

Sam is stumbling laughing right on Dean's heels and Dean is jostling him and they're supporting each other.

"What if I just went to bed now," Sam says.

"In your wet briefs? Gross."

"I dunno where the towels are."

Dean shoves Sam off of him and shakes his own head like he's a dog shedding water before they enter the cabin.

Sam shoves Dean in retaliation, and Dean snaps the elastic of Sam's briefs, and Sam realizes through the soreness of his muscles he's aroused, really physically turned on, half hard and he probably has been for a while now.

But it's dark now that they're inside, and nobody can really see much, just dim outlines. So Sam goes over to the bed, leaning on the foot of it with his hand, groping his way to the far side, his side, the away-from-the-door side. It's half to guide himself in the dark half because he's drunk and unsteady on his feet, but they're both nearly falling down wobbly-legged, it's nothing to be embarrassed about, is it?

He strips off his boxers and then Dean tosses him a shirt – maybe the shirt he was wearing earlier? huh, maybe, being drunk he can't recall. 

"There, towel off," Dean says, and Sam snorts and dries off with it before collapsing onto the bed.

Here's his problem, though – he's still half hard and it's been ages since he's done anything about it. Sharing a bed with your brother tends to put a damper on that kind of behavior Sam really prefers to do in private, though it doesn't seem to have stopped Dean lately. Lying on his back hearing Dean shucking off his shorts, rubbing his legs and hair dry, barely able to see the movement in the corner of his eye in the dark, he moves his hand down to cup his dick. He lets it swing up against his stomach, and with his hand he holds it down, keeps it from bobbing around.

Dean grunts, flops down too on Sam's left. The mattress inclines towards the middle then, but Sam doesn't edge away. He's kind of touching himself, all right, and the jostling helps a little too much, and hell, fuck it, he needs to fucking take care of this and they're both gonna pass out in an instant anyway.

His elbow bumps Dean's as he strokes his dick. 

"Dude," Dean says.

"Mmf," Sam grunts, something between faking sleep and "so what?" A guy has needs. Dean the outdoor masturbator should understand.

"I can feel your arm _moving_."

"Shut up," Sam says. The fact is he's exhausted and drunk, so even though this feels so very fucking necessary, and he's kind of burning white hot at any touch, even his own, he needs the pressure like he needed air when Dean was holding him underwater earlier, and with his drunken tired technique he is not exactly blowing his load in thirty seconds. And maybe that's even despite the fact that he's thinking of how Dean would do this and not give a shit who saw, how free and easy this can be, not caring if Dean sees or maybe letting him… God, and the way Dean's body felt against his, all moving muscle and skin, fuck, it's been a while.

"You're drunk," Dean says.

"So?" Sam pants.

"So you're just…"

The slip and fap of Sam fisting his dick sounds in the dead quiet where Dean pauses. Let him hear it for all Sam cares. Not giving a shit is awesome.

"You're not gonna…"

Sam makes a frustrated noise in his throat.

"Shit, come on already," Dean says, and then his hand is on top of Sam's, then sliding under towards Sam's balls to hold him at the base. He pushes Sam's hand away by sliding his own under and up, grip tight and firm, tighter than Sam's but _good_ , wow, fuck, apparently _this_ is what Sam needed. Sam groans and Dean's hand moves steady and hard on him, callous of his thumb rough against the crown of his dick, Dean's breath gusting hot on Sam's shoulder and his arm firm against Sam's naked stomach, shit. Dean's thumb sliding around to rub across the slit, and the squeeze and twist of his technique is more all over the place than precise and efficient, out of sleepiness and whatever it is making Dean bite his lip between his teeth, so close Sam can see it.

Dean's hands feel all over the place and Sam fucking loses it then – "Jesus fucking Christ," he says, body stiffening and arching with his come landing hot on his stomach, definitely hot, he can hear Dean hiss at its touch. Dean's arm over his stomach weighs him down to the mattress, his back damp with sweat wrinkling the sheet as Dean strokes him through it. Maybe Sam's hallucinating but through the roar in his ears he thinks he hears Dean say something mindless like "That's it, there you go."

When Sam stops arching and twitching and making embarrassing drunken noises he swears he doesn't normally make, at the exact moment when he might begin to reflect on the fact that his _brother_ just got him off, like they're kids experimenting again except they are so not, Sam is seven fucking teen and Dean way older than that – that's when Dean takes his hand off Sam, and rolls over and away onto his stomach on his side of the bed.

Sam is still gasping, not having entirely processed what just happened, caught by surprise in a way he hasn't been in a long while. And then he hits sleep like a wall.

-

Sam dreams that night about Dean bending down over him, pinching his nose and sealing his mouth over Sam's airtight. Sam is living underwater and Dean brings him sustenance from the surface. It's not that he's ungrateful, but he'd really like to breathe right now, he's fine now, he can do this on his own.

But Dean's fingers are still hard on the bridge of his nose, his lips are still molded around Sam's lips, not like a kiss but Sam can feel it burning like a brand, wet but not too wet, warm and life-giving and painful.

Dean's not breathing into him, though. Sam's chest is heavy, it's hard to breathe, he's struggling up but the duckweed of the lake wraps around his ankles, his legs, like the lake is a monster trying to pull him down. He looks down but it's Dean, and he yells at Dean to cut it out, what does he think he's doing?

Sam wakes up hot and tangled in the sheets which he'd somehow stolen entirely off Dean's side of the bed. His legs are struggling and kicking to move, and he's ended up with his arm trapped against his chest and down against his stomach, which he's lying on, which is probably why he was struggling to breathe in that dream. He's half hard, in the way that he sometimes is waking up.

It comes back to him now – the cut on his shin throbbing, and the realization that he's sleeping nude, which he never does. The night they spent swimming, the rescue holds and Dean insisting that none of that was any good if you didn't know CPR, mouth breathing and chest compressions that can break your ribs. His gorge rises as he thinks of it, and then his hand brushes against his bare dick and he remembers that Dean jerked him off last night.

Sam untangles himself and sits up, trying to shake the dream from him by shaking his head, rolling his shoulders, like shedding water from his hair and off his back. He can hear Dean pumping water outside.

Sam's hung over and he figures so is Dean. They move about slowly and in relative quiet. The sun is really fucking bright and hot at midday, but the cabin is too stuffy, and it's all too much. Sam wants to say fuck it, and take a dip, but his leg still hurts anyway and swimming might make the queasy feeling in his stomach turn to outright nausea.

He goes and kneels by the edge of the water, trying not to press his cut shin against the ground hard, and ducks his hair just under the surface. He whips it back and gets water all over his face, but it feels good, a relief.

He does it again, and shivers at the cold drops splashing on his bare back and shoulders, dripping down his neck. He feels more awake now.

Dean's still inside or wandered off somewhere, so the deck chair is fucking his.

Sam sits and unzips his shorts, and pulls his dick out. The air on it feels cool, his hand hot, as the blood flows to it. He closes his eyes and thinks of nothing at all.

He's fully hard thinking only of the comfort of the heat, the feel of his own hand on his dick, a good rhythm, when he hears Dean's voice.

"Oh, so it's okay for _you_ to jack off in the open," Dean says.

Sam doesn't even bother opening his eyes. "Shut up," he moans, a little too far gone to have any kind of conversation right now.

"What about the _neighbors,_ Sam?"

Sam opens his eyes to glare at Dean. Dean glares back.

"You're serious? This bugs you?" Sam has slowed down, gone from jacking himself to fondling himself obscenely, and he can see Dean's eyes flicker down to his crotch. "After last night?"

Sam knows he's being bold as brass, that this is something that should not go acknowledged or remembered. It's rash of him but he doesn't care, he's leaving in a few weeks and then this will be a molehill transgression next to the mountain of abandoning the family. More simply, he's never shied away from pushing Dean's buttons, and they're the only two people out here, and hell, nothing's going to _happen_ if Sam doesn't push some damn buttons.

Dean looks Sam in the eye, and Sam's expecting the anger the but he doesn't expect Dean's outright fear. It's not like they haven't done this before. It's a terrifying expression, honestly, considering the few yet drastic contexts in which Sam's seen Dean like this. Sam is frozen in it like a deer in headlights. All he can do is glare back – sardonic anger, his defense against everything now.

Dean's face is red, though it may just be sunburn. "You little…" Dean says, and rubs a hand over his eyes. "We're gonna hunt tonight, all right? So I'm gonna clean my guns and take a nap." He walks to the shore and slaps cupped handfuls of the cold water onto the sides of his head, back of his neck, then goes inside without looking back at Sam.

Sam watches his brother's broad shoulders and swagger as he leaves, and then thinks about the scene he's making, and it doesn't take long for him to finish. Stamina be damned. He hopes Dean is at the window, if only because he has that desire which lives in every little sibling, to push back harder, irritate his brother and drive him crazy.

-

Sam falls asleep in the shade.

He keeps having dreams that are so strange they must be anxiety dreams. He does feel anxious. The worst case scenarios for when he finally leaves for Stanford keep imprinting fear on his mind. The anxiety must work its way out of him sometime somehow because of this, his success at repressing it, and the general oppressive heat of the summer, the lazy wordlessness of the day. He finds himself thinking of the creatures in the forest when he wakes up, thinking of the near menace of monsters that doesn't touch them yet, the strange world of wilderness they've only barely tamed.

Sam thinks he hears thunder storms but they aren't there. He dreams it's rocks falling in the mountains, avalanches, packs of wolves falling all over each other, the lowing of buffalo trampling over the plains. The roar of the Pacific Ocean on cliffs.

The rumble and thrum keeps him sleeping poor but hard, like the dreams don't let him rest. Dreams of boredom and the undercurrent of tension riding through him, the crescendo towards final action all coming soon and to a head when he'll leave for good.

Sam wakes up with the sun moved and a burn stinging on his skin, feeling nervous about hunting that night, and then some.

No one knows about Stanford but him, his girlfriend Mandy, his guidance counselor, and Pastor Jim, who Sam confided in and who said he'd hold on to Sam's mail, every acceptance and rejection passing through his hands. Jim wished him luck and told him to keep in touch during school, and Sam will if he can, because he's afraid he'll find little help from his father.

He has no clue what Dean will say. It might be driving him more than a little crazy. Sam oscillates wildly between worrying his ass off and refusing to worry. Out here he won't deny himself anything, every moment a parting gift, and that means Dean too, anything Dean will give, though he doesn't know, though he's insisting on making it weird. It's a fucking weird thing, all right, but Sam's suddenly got what feels like a world of perspective and the thought of not having to face any consequences if he leaves.

He feels like shit when he realizes he's thinking about it that way, but then again, what happens happens. They're both going a little crazy out here in the woods.

-  
-  
-  


_  
"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."  
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise_

 

Dean went off on his own for a while to cool off. Sam fucking drives him crazy. Dean suspects he fell asleep in the deck chair, or went on doing what teenagers do, jerk off to pass the time. He ends up passing the time doing what they should both be doing together – the difference is Dean doesn't mind this, hunting stuff, while Sam will complain the whole way till Dad barks at him to quit it. Dean is intent on finding somewhere nice to sit, away from everything, and whittle idly.

When he gets back, it's late afternoon and he and Sam get their gear ready. They don't talk, but Dean suspects the afternoon was restful for both of them, because he doesn't get that hostile, tense vibe from Sam or bubbling up in him either. They're just going out to do recon, find what they can find, and get back before it gets too dark. Last night and this morning are off the table, and Dean thinks they're both happy to keep it that way.

They go that evening as soon as the sun's rays start slanting low and the hills' shadows lengthen. It's when the animals get really active, and they work better with some light still, let their eyes get used to the dark.

The dog, who Sam is calling Regina now, follows them, despite both Sam and Dean's efforts to tell her to go back to the cabin. She's quiet, though, which Sam points out is a plus, and Dean points out is a bit suspicious. Sam bristles defensively but Dean says, "All I mean is, we don't know anything about this dog, you know?"

"Maybe she's a hunting dog," Sam says.

"Funny looking hunting dog."

"You're funny-looking," Sam grumbles.

Dean snorts. "Seriously, lame."

They see birds flying to and fro, squirrels, small creatures rustling in the underbrush. Sam assumed they'd scare off anything big with the crunching of their boots, but they actually run into a couple adult deer and a juvenile fawn walking slowly through a thatch of bushes, eating the leaves from them. 

An involuntary shudder runs through Sam. Dean looks at him funny. The dog, though, is completely calm.

The deer are calm, too. They look at them, and slowly walk away like normal deer. Sam and Dean don't follow.

Fifteen more minutes of walking and nothing interesting – some deer tracks, some raccoons, and Bonesy calm the whole time, strangely un-doglike in her lack of interest.

Then she bounds up ahead, and Sam and Dean freeze, whisper-shout, _Hey!_ There's a thrashing in the brush, and they run towards it.

Regina's got a chupacabra by the neck and is shaking it to kill. The neck is already snapped.

"Drop it," Sam says, and the dog happily does so, wagging her tail.

"Well, shit," Dean says, surprised. "Maybe she is a hunting dog after all." He uses the muzzle of his rifle to turn the body over. "Not the biggest we've ever seen, but not bad."

"Good dog," Sam says, petting her wide white head. Dean bags the chupacabra to use as bait.

They catch another, the dog chasing it down, and then the dog chases a fox around and around and catches and shakes it, but lets it go in the end, which Sam sighs at and Dean laughs. Then, of course, thunder begins to rumble.

"Again?" Sam whines. The dog whines too. 

On their way back, she doesn't even blink at the lightning, but when huge drops of rain start to fall she suddenly turns and bounds away, away from the cabin, back into the woods they came from.

Sam turns to chase after, but suddenly Dean grabs his shoulder. He can hear the vicious sounds of a dog fighting, snarls and yelps far worse than. Sam's face shifts into fear as he hears the noises too, and he shouts after her, "Reggie!" and runs despite Dean's warning yell. Dean chases after Sam, and finds that the dog isn't far. Its whole face is dark now, blending with its red ears now, muzzle bloodied and teeth sunk into the throat of a deer.

"The hell?" Dean says. This dog is really fucking weird. "All she was interested in were chupacabras before. We saw those deer."

The lightning goes and by the flash, they can see on the dead animal the gleam of nasty fangs, downward-curving, white and red and sharp in the blue-green light.

"Shit," Dean says as it goes dark again, and then the dog growls more into the distance.

"Never seen those before," Sam says.

"Nope," says Dean, and then lightning strikes near, the crack making them both jump. Rain starts falling hard and heavy, and the dog snarls a bone-chilling snarl. Dean drops the bagged chupacabra and they run back to the cabin.

-

They barely escape another soaking, and despite the freaking weird deer they just met, Dean feels pretty damn lucky. He rubs his damp arms and shivers, still thrumming with adrenaline but with nowhere to put it and his legs are feeling sore after their trek and spring back. The air has a chill that makes their shaken nerves worse.

"What the hell was that?" Sam 

"I don't know. We'll ask Dad when he calls."

"Yeah," Sam says, looking doubtful. "But that's in two days."

"We'll go look at the body tomorrow. I got no clue, though, Sam." Dean sticks his head out the cabin, no sight of the dog. He grabs some kindling and a log from the small pile sitting near the door, dry in the overhang. He's going to build a fire and get warm.

The dog returns soaking wet before long, muzzle bloodied. Dean' shouldn't be surprised; as feral as the thing seems now, the dog seems to have adopted them, having already come back time and again. It probably likes the company, and what Sam feeds it. Sam points at the lake and says, "Go wash up!" Dean scoffs, but the dog actually listens, and comes back clean except for her muddy feet.

"Aw, Sam!" Dean's about to tell Sam to clean her up, but then she shakes in front of him, showering him with water, and he groans as Sam smirks. Then the dog lies down in front of the stove fire.

"Whatever, you're already wet," Sam says to Dean, who goes on grumbling about being covered in dirty dog-water.

Dean kneels in front of the stove to load a small log in, kindling and paper. He nudges the dog with his knee. "Move. Please."

"Her name's Regina."

"You made that up. Come on, Reggie. Move your butt."

Reggie doesn't budge.

"C'mon, Regina, come here," Sam calls. Of course the dog goes to him.

"You _are_ the dog whisperer," says Dean. "Freak."

"You're welcome." Sam looks smug. Dean rolls his eyes and returns to building his fire.

Once Dean is done, the dog, of course, claims the front row seat. Even from further back, though, Dean can feel the fire's heat while sitting on the floor, his back resting against the foot of the bed.

"Now that's the way to do it," Dean says. He looks up at Sam, who is slouching on the bed above him, posture giving away his sleepiness, eyes dark and glittering orange, lost in staring at the flames.  
Dean gets up to sit on the bed when the heat gets too strong, and after he rolls over to his side of the bed, Sam drops off almost instantly, fully clothed, boots on and all. Dean'll wake him up when he puts out the fire. He'll pull Sam's boots off and that'll probably wake him up enough for Sam to decide whether he needs to take his clothes off to sleep or if he's just going to let it be. 

Dean wonders about those deer out there. Maybe they could figure something out without having to wait till Dad calls the pay phone in a couple days, whether the deer is just another animal or if it needs something special, if this dog is even a normal dog.

For all that Sam hates hunting, he's surprised Sam didn't get upset when the dog killed another animal. But that's what hunting dogs do, and Sam hasn't been too bad about this hunt. Undoubtedly since Dad isn't there.

Dean doesn't know how he feels about it, knowing that most of what Sam hates about hunting is Dad-related. That if Dad isn't around, maybe Sam could get used to it.

Dean sure could.

This summer they've been tying up loose ends and going from hunt to hunt in the hot season. Autumn will bring haunts on the tail of the monsters, and if Dean starts working on a plan to get a reliable car, something to carry gear for at least two - then he and Sam can set off on their own, not just Dean on his motorcycle but the two of them. It's basically the same as what Dad's been planning on, them getting their own cars eventually. Sam's getting too huge for the backseat of the Impala for sure. But while Sam was in school they were all three of them in the car less often, and Dean ended up spending a lot of time by himself anyway.

Dean wants a car for him and Sam, though, not a motorcycle for just him. Maybe Dad doesn't know that, but he knows he'd rather his boys were together looking out for each other, not striking out alone.  
He stares at Sam on the bed, the way the light falls on his face and makes shadows there. Maybe Sam would rather be alone, and he knows it hurts Dad, even though he doesn't talk about it. Maybe Sam would push away. But this summer, this hunt – Dean's resolved to not give Sam too much shit, so Sam can see how things can be good between them. Dean might be the needy one here, though.

Dean does that, he needs company. It happens for him quicker than for Sam, who always seems most comfortable with his head in a book, ignoring the rest of the world. Sam's too sharp for everyone else, too cutting. He just wants to be left alone, which isn't what Dean wants to do, but he wants to give Sam his space. Doesn't want him running away again, like Flagstaff, what a miserable fucking disaster.

Dean stretches and groans happily with this thought. It's gonna get better. They're going to find the thing that killed mom and kill it, and then the whole world will open up.

-

The morning is hot already and Dean sits in the shade, mentally goes over supplies, how far they've gone. The schedule to call Dad. The tally of days he's notched on the exterior cabin wall in a hopefully inconspicuous place. The recon he's done – nothing majorly impressive but some wildlife tracking practice they'd picked up from their dad and his various friends. If he had to shoot and kill something to feed them he would, but they'd have to be pretty starving.

"You think those fangy deer taste any good?" Dean asks after telling Sam this idea of his.

"They're probably carnivorous, so no. But that's very _My Side of the Mountain_ of you," Sam says.

"I remember that book. Didn't the kid get a hawk or something?"

"Wow, good one, Dean," Sam mocked.

"Asshole," Dean says, and Sam flips him off.

Dean's sitting half shade of an evergreen, etching protective runes into a knife blade. Maybe it wouldn't do anything against most of what they hunt, ghosts least of all, but Sam says it's supposed to work against Nordic things, so maybe one day they'll meet a frost giant and Dean will be prepared.

He's got a plan he tells Sam about, to make iron knives out of railroad spikes.

"It's illegal to take those, you know. They're private or federal property, they crack down hard on that." Sam's stripping off his shirt.

"What? Nah, what if they're not even in the tracks? I'm not gonna pry them up out of the ground." Dean would definitely pry them out of the ground.

"Well, how do they know, if they catch you with them in your hand?"

"You're such a goody two-shoes. How do you even know that, anyway?"

Sam shrugs. "Read it somewhere."

He looks distracted, staring into the middle distance somewhere to the right of Dean. At the fire pit, maybe. Sam hooks his thumbs inside the hem of his shorts, and hesitates, shoulders tensed, biting his lip.

Somehow Dean is held in the same suspense, though he doesn't even know what it is, doesn't think Sam's even noticing him anymore. There's a pale strip of skin showing over the waist of those shorts. Dean knows it, though he hasn't seen much of it in broad daylight before – well, except for Sam's brief moment jerking it in the deck chair. The sun makes his paler skin seem softer, thinner, more delicate. Fragile, even and Dean isn't so protective of Sam that he has a weird need to cover him up, but right now he feels the urge to conceal that pale under-skin and the rest of it that extends beyond his sight. Keep it from the sun and the dirt and the dry wind. He wants to bring Sam close and draw a blanket around not just him but around them together. He remembers how Sam's bare skin glows in the moonlight and how the contrast looks then, his pale thighs next to his darker forearms. Though he tries not to look anymore, tried for a long time not to, since it would be too _weird_.

But here in the harsh light, the golden-gilding thick sunlight of the heat of the day, Sam is brash and careless after two plus weeks without seeing another soul, other than Dean. And Dean is brazen, because nothing can hide, in this bright midday sun, and so why look away, why act like you can't see something when it's standing right in front of you.

"Something" is Sam, stripping off his shorts right there, five feet from Dean and slightly further from the water's edge. Jesus, Dean isn't into conspiracy theory or superstition, but why right there, why not the ambiguous midpoint or the definite water's edge? Does Sam know what he's doing? What this could look like, what Dean sees?

_No, you dumbass, you asshole,_ he curses himself.

Sam is still ignoring him, still gazing at the middle distance, tossing his shorts onto a log near the fire pit and walking towards the water, naked as a jaybird. He's looking at the lake now, turned away. Dean thinks, _this is not some goddamn show he's putting on for you. He's your_ little brother _. If he's buckass naked it isn't a show for you, it's fucking_ normal _._ But Dean can't take his eyes off Sam's back, the small of it, his ass and long thighs.

Maybe it's entirely reasonable for Dean to be freaked out about this. For starters, they never were the casually naked types. They always spent too much time in each others' space, and with life on the road and in shared motel rooms, privacy became a big deal. Sam got really shy when he was about ten and still the smallest in his class. He wore his heavy coat to school every day. He was shy when puberty hit, shy when his testosterone-given muscles didn't kick in same time as the others, and then shy when they did, late bloomer that he was. Shy about being suddenly clumsy, shy about the attention girls weren't and then suddenly were paying him – and this was only ending in the last couple of years.

So yeah, for Sam to strip naked right in front of Dean's face, that's not normal for _them_. And if Dean feels really weird about it, then that fucking makes sense.

It's been a few years since their arrangement. They stopped when Sam started talking about this girl he wanted to ask out, and Sam is serious about the girls he likes, he's serious about everything. So when he stopped coming over to Dean's bed at night Dean got it, no explanation needed. He supposed it made sense, even though Dean hadn't thought about stopping despite the few things he had going on with a few girls in every town they'd been through. It was different, what he did with Sam. It was separate. It wasn't often, and they hid it from Dad of course, knowing that he wouldn't want to know what his boys got up to with their right hands at night. But on nights when Dad was away or where they got a treat and had their own room to themselves, once the lights were out Sam might crawl into Dean's bed and they'd jerk each other off, or Dean would hear Sam and offer, "Want a hand?" And Sam would say "Yeah," and Dean would go give him one.

If Sam wanted to stop, though, Dean didn't mind. This was something plenty of kids did, then grew out of.

Except now, it's been a long while since anything, and Dean hasn't been with a girl he really liked in ages. Sam and his girlfriend broke up when they left town at the end of the school year just in time for Sam to finish classes – they mailed his diploma to Pastor Jim, who said he'd hold on to it. Said he was real proud of Sam, and Sam stammered saying thank you, and Dean didn't get how high school was such a big deal to Sam since it all came so easy to him. Could've just gotten a GED like Dean.

Sam didn't seem that torn up about leaving Mandy, even though, like Dean said, they'd been serious and all. "She's going to college, we knew we'd both be moving on, bigger stuff ahead – hunting, you know." Dean had smiled, slapped Sam on the shoulder a couple times till Sam twisted away. He said "Well aren't you so grown up about all this. Mazel Tov, Sammy."

Dean's pretty sure though this means it's been months since either of them has gotten laid. He knows it's true for him. And Sam, Sam's too serious to have a little fun.

Sam's up to his thighs in the lake, shoulders tense and arms spread for balance, wincing at the cold meltwater as he dips his junk in it. Dean laughs on the shore. Sam can apparently hear him, since he flips Dean the bird without turning around. His back is muscular, and he's fit, nearly starting to get built, except his metabolism's so fast he probably won't catch up to Dean in muscle mass for a bit.

The pale strip is showing again as Sam gets hips-deep, then disappears as water laps the tanned, fuzzy-haired small of his back.

Dean knows he's staring but only then does he realize he's got a hand on his crotch, the heel of it pressing down against his dick. He freezes, hand still there, feels his own cock warm and good. A pleasure-seeking thing between his legs with a mind of its own. He sighs.

Sam, apparently having reached the point where the deeper waters unreached by sun become too cold, flops onto his back, sending a splash up before he rose to float at the top, his chest thrust out to keep his skinny ass afloat, everything else only scarcely bobbing to the surface as he lazily kicked, his dick floating and soft in plain sight, nestled in a thatch of dark hair.

Dean looks down at the curved blade and the steel hand graver in his lap, so Sam doesn't catch him staring. Still, Dean's palm is on his crotch, pressing on his jeans.

He closes his eyes to the blinding sight of Sam naked and floating in shimmering gold water, and contemplates falling asleep in the heat, letting it all drift away, too much to deal with right now.

Dean's twenty-two. He's old enough to know not to do this, smart enough to know too. That you are wishing hell down on yourself, the wrath of heaven and the life of an outcast, if you fall in love with and fuck your baby brother. It's damning.

But maybe, then again, he knows his family's seen enough shit to have a different perspective on how much you should love your brother, and what evil really is.

None of that relative morality shit. He's no Humbert fucking Humbert. Dean shakes himself, half purposefully and half out of the heeby-jeebies, and gets up to lie on the ground so he isn't facing Sam in the water.

-

Honestly Dean is just minding his business, he doesn't know why Sam comes and finds him all the time. Dean'll complain but if he's honest he's not complaining too hard about this whole vacation so far.

"You're such an exhibitionist freak," Sam says, and Dean snorts in disbelief, too relaxed to give a shit.

"Me?" The nerve. "I'm sitting here in a chair. You're the one walking around in his underwear."

Sam would normally redden but this new, middle-of-nowhere, no-Dad-around Sam has got a smartass look on his face, refusing to be ashamed, intent on making this about how Dean is being gross and violating human decency. "I don't touch myself where everyone can see!" He flings his arm towards the lake, where, across the water, there's another cabin much like theirs.

"I haven't seen lights on there for a week. Look, I could barely tell if someone over there was jerking off, I don't know why I gotta cover up if I come out here – by myself! – and take a little me-time."

Sam snorts at the euphemism.

"It's the fucking middle of the woods, Sam. If you don't wanna watch me jerk off, go somewhere else, because there's a lot of space here in case you hadn't noticed. I'm gonna jerk off when I want." Maybe he's messing with Sam but Sam messed with him first. Pulling that gig, stripping to go swimming.

But Dean feels disingenuous, thinking that. Sam may have started the acting out but it was before then, that second day, when after swimming the sun set and Dean found Sam in the plastic lounge chair, way over in the last patch of sunlight. Sam had dragged the chair over away from the cabin and fire circle and Dean to sit and watch the lake, shoulders stretched and dry and lit orange in the leftover sun. 

They'd swam, and then Dean had gotten out and toweled off to go get some dinner. Sam had stayed in, not yet tired, maybe wanting some time alone as Sam often did, and Dean got something to eat because he knew he'd be starving soon and so would Sam, and he didn't want to put hp with Sam's bitching

Dean, dry and newly clothed, had gone outside to tell Sam there was food, when he saw Sam stretching his legs out on the deck chair, over in the last corner of sun further up the shore. The light splotched Sam's shoulders in orange glow. Sam looked like a carefree kid again for a moment, and Dean took a bit to appreciate the sight of his brother in some peace, when Sam had spent most of his life always restless, angry.

Sam'd had a rough time being a teenager. Technically he still was one, and technically things were still kinda rough between him and Dad, but all that was gonna change. Now without schools to stick around and the car becoming a bit cramped for three grown men, they'd get another one, Sam could get some time away from John, he and Dean could go out and do recon together or even some of their own hunts. Sam talks like he hates hunting but Dean sees Sam light up sometimes when he gets his hands on a really old book, and when Sam rattles off the myths and legends, cryptography and cryptids, well, who the hell doesn't love reading about cryptids? Anyway, Sam would research them, and Dean would kill them, and Dad would find the thing that had killed mom and they'd take it down together. They were already a great team, Dean could see it. It was only going to get easier from here on out.

Sam stretched his arms up, then curled up and wrapped them around his knees. His hair, being still slightly damp, curled at the nape of his neck, and (walking closer), Dean could see the pebbling of goosebumps, Sam's fine hairs lit golden and standing on end, running over the scar above his shoulderblade there that Dean had helped bandage himself. He winced but also saw the ripple of Sam's muscles under the scar tissue, how it had faded in time, become part of Sam, Sam's growing unbeatable vital body that Dean knew so well. 

Sam shivered. Dean wanted to put his warm hands on Sam's goosepimpled skin and press the shivers back down, smooth it out till Sam's muscles were relaxed and supple under his hands.

He gulped and said, "Food's inside if you're hungry."

Sam looked over his shoulder towards Dean, not quite able to put his eyes on him but getting him in his peripheral vision. "You trying to sneak up on me?"

Dean felt guilty. He hadn't meant to. That kind of thing just happened.

Sam wasn't accusing, didn't even dwell on it. His legs had been under him for a while and seemed to be pins and needles. He stood up and tried to balance against the chair, but the frame was light and the back wobbly, so Dean reached out to grab his shoulder and right him, and Sam grabbed as he stumbled. Sam's shorts, a pair of swim shorts from the Salvation Army and not a old pair of boxer-briefs like Dean had set aside as his designated swim shorts, were still wet and dripping from being sat on.

Dean said, with a laugh in his voice, "You've got goosebumps all over, you're gonna want to dry off before your junk freezes."

"Yeah, duh." And Sam let go of Dean to gingerly walk across the twigs and pine needles and pebbled dirt in his bare feet to the cabin. Dean didn't manage the easy chuckle he would have liked. He looked down at the empty chair and then out across the lake, and thought of how vastly empty their weeks would be.

But that was before they found this dog and this bizarre deer creature. Honestly, at first, Dean had doubted they'd find anything really interesting in the woods, despite their Dad's assurances. They couldn't go as far without overnighting in the woods, which Dad had forbidden and Dean wasn't that interested in doing anyway, considering the wildlife.

Now Dean's interested, all right, but the wildlife seems even more dangerous than he'd thought. He'd rather sit here by the lake most days, and watch their sunburns progress over the week.

It's not like Dean has a _thing_ for Sam's shoulders. He just notices them because they're out a lot, and occasionally they get burnt, and okay, they're really much broader than they used to be and it's weird to see your kid brother growing up and getting big when he's been a shrimp all his life.

Dean's got his t-shirt and sunglasses on sitting in the chair in the sun now, and from behind the safety of the dark frames he can see Sam out there sitting on a rock sunning himself, absurdly like some fucking Narcissus or, what, Hylas? The guy the nymphs drag underwater. Well, more butch than that guy. The one Zeus wanted for his cupbearer. The one the sun god wanted to pull his chariot. Or was he his son? Fuck. Dean can't stop looking. He's given up on reading his book, which is one of Sam's, which is Lolita, horrifically. He thought he wanted to read it before he really knew what it was about and before Sam made it uncool, gave it his geek cred by bringing it. It's not really a rewarding book. His interest peaked when Dolores climbed on Humbert's lap and Humbert secretly got his rocks off to it – which is sick, and disgusting, and creepy as fuck. It both summons and poisons every school girl fantasy he's ever entertained, and all the action he's not getting this summer makes him want to whack off to them horribly, as if to see them one last time before Vladimir Nabokov ruins them forever. Then he'll never pick up Lolita again and he'll judge everyone who reads it as hard as he's judging himself right now.

One of the most memorable nights of Dean's life was in high school when he first had real, more-than-blowjob sex with Julie, the hot volleyball star of their town high school. She was a good couple years older than him, and she rode him one night in the back of her car, good and hard, and he came back and told Sam all about it in every buzzed and vivid run-on detail. Seeing Sam's face as he took it all in made Dean realize that the pleasure he got from this, bragging about not just his game but the specific weirdly educational nature of his game, giving Sam the play by play - it was all because one day he wanted Sam to do this. Maybe he wanted Sam to tell him about it, and maybe he actually wanted to share this with Sam and Sam's awed face. One day he didn't just want to replay it to Sam but replay it with him, for Sam to get this idea in his head now and let it stew – 

But that's not what their thing was about, back then. Their mutual agreement, the you-scratch-my-ears and I'll-scratch-yours arrangement that Dean feels creeping up in desire again with the mutual sexual frustration going on in the middle of nowhere.

It wasn't supposed to be about _wanting Sam_.

Dean was supposed to just want relief, relief and entertainment. He wasn't supposed to want stuff to actually _happen_.

-

It's the end of the three weeks Dad planned on them being there, so Dean builds a fire with the last of the already-chopped wood and he and Sam pass around the last of the bottle of whiskey. There's not that much left, Dean thinks ruefully. He was really hoping he could get drunk again tonight. Get both of them drunk – see this solitary vacation out with a bang, have one last fling before the yoke of Dad's presence weighed down on Sam and made him go back to being that curdled, sour kid that causes them all so much grief.

He doesn't say the last part to Sam but does say, "Wish we could get really drunk."

"Like last time?" Sam asks. His eyes are shining bright in the dusk and Dean can tell by that look, his smile, that he's already buzzed.

"Sure," Dean says, thinking of the swim in the lake and the roughhousing until Sam smirks, leans back against the big stump and stretches his legs across the ground, splayed wide like he's showing something off. Dean flushes. "We already drank more than half the bottle, though. So probably not that drunk."

"Yeah, sure." Sam says, looking off into the distance over the flames, into the darkness of the trees. "Gonna miss all this getting away with anything."

"Like you weren't complaining about coming here."

"Yeah, yeah," Sam shoves the bottle at Dean, leaning way over to reach. "Shut up and take another drink."  
Dean does.

"I guess I miss people," Dean says. "People to play pool with. Bars full of 'em. Hot chicks," and he waggles his eyebrows suggestively at Sam.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Of course."

"Don't you miss your girlfriend? What was her name? Misty?"

"Misty!" Sam laughs, as if that's a hilarious name to have. "Her name was Mandy. I guess, sure. She's probably doing fine, though. Kinda out of my league."

"I coulda told you that."

"Shut up." Sam stretches again and Dean notices how far his shirt rides up over his belly. Kid's always getting taller, stretching out. A hand, maybe two hand-widths of bare skin there, and Dean squeezes the neck of the bottle and tells himself, _not that drunk_.

"Nah, I mean, you _miss_ her –" Dean makes a crude movement, something between an s-curve with one hand and a smack with thither, rocking back and forth on the log he's sitting on making it thump rhythmically.

Sam snorts at Dean's pantomime. "Gross, dude."

"She let you tap that, yeah?"

"Oh my god, Dean, you don't even know."

"No, come on, now you gotta say!" Dean's laughing and so is Sam. He looks smug. Well, hell.

"Like, all the time. She was crazy about it. Crazier than me."

Dean snorts. "Well, that's saying something."

"Asshole." Sam rubs at his face, but the smoke's going the other direction.

"She ever blow you?"

"Eh, nah."

"Mm, shame."

"What?"

"You mean you never had one?"

"I – no, I've never had a blowjob, Dean."

Dean kicks his heels at the log with gleeful thuds. "You're missing out!"

"You tryna rub it in?"

Dean ignores the tone of that. "No, dude, they're great. You ever go down on a chick?"

"Uh. A little once."

"Damn! And no blowjobs? Let me tell you, going down on a chick is the best, I don't know why they don't like BJs more than they do." Dean cracks a grin at Sam's snicker. "Look, next time we can get you in a bar, I'll find you some action."

"I don't need you hooking me up at bars, Dean, you know I think that's creepy."

"Fine, if you're gonna continue to be against sex with strangers."

"Yes, thanks."

The fire crackles.

"My point is, if going down on chicks _and_ getting your dick sucked is awesome, I wonder what it'd be like to give one. To suck dick, I mean."

Sam looks at Dean, flustered. "Really?"

Dean shrugs, trying to make it nonchalant. "Yeah, I mean, but who'm I gonna offer, huh? I don't wanna go around offering to blow dudes at bars, looking to get my ass kicked. 'Sides," he says, taking another swig. "It's not a gay thing. Just curious."

A pause stretches out. Dean cocks an eyebrow, waiting for Sam to react.

"You're such a freak, Dean." But Sam scoots up against his log again and crosses his legs, lets a hand fall into his lap. "I dunno, convince me."

"What?"

"Like, am I really missing out? Are you just winding me up?"

"Sammy," Dean says, his skin starting to prickle and tighten from the fire's heat. He gets the distinct feeling Sam's trying to wind _him_ up, which is just what he's suspected for a week or two now, but it's too strange to mention.

"It's like, well, you know what sex with a girl is like. Warm and wet and tight, you know, hot and sweet when she squeezes around you, gets her legs around you. Now imagine her sweet lips and wet tongue around you – yeah, and she gets you all wet with her spit and you're not wasting time putting a wet spot in your shorts, huh. It's the _suction_ too – that's _more_ than tight, and she's got a hand squeezed around your dick and another one fondling your balls – you like that, right –" and suddenly Dean, who's been gazing off over the fire to avoid thinking about the fact that he's giving a sex monologue to his little brother, feels a hand on his knee, jerking it to the side.

Sam's there kneeling with his hands braced on Dean's legs, holding himself so he can stretch up, his face right under Dean's nose nearly poking his chin, and as Dean looks down and starts to say "What the hell" Sam cranes up and bites his bottom lip.

Dean gasps.

He's already hard, and jerks reflexively when Sam grabs for his fly, brushing Dean's hardon with his hands, opening his jeans up right there.

"What're you doing?" Dean says, somehow completely off-guard and unprepared for this.

"What do you think?" Sam butts his head against Dean's chest to push him to sitting up. Dean can feel Sam's hands not on his knees now but the tops of his thighs, nearly at the joint with his hip, and the pressure there is just sending his blood skyrocketing. He is so fucking turned on he can barely think but he manages to blurt out something like "Don't – you don't have to – you were right you shouldn't –"

"Shut up," and Sam takes Dean's dick out of his pants. Sam's hot bare calloused hands on him, that shuts Dean up pretty well.

Sam looks at Dean's dick where his hand is wrapped around it, not tight, just holding the weight of him. Dean looks too. His mouth is dry, and he can feel his own throat working like his protests are still trying to get out. Sam grins up at him, wicked as sin, and starts giving Dean long hard strokes with his fist.

Sam's leaning down but isn't sticking his face in it, but he's getting close, shit, Dean can't stop thinking about it. How he wants sam's mouth on his dick, wants him to rub his cheeks on it. It's dark and he's hidden in Sam's shadow from the firelight, but Sam's face is hidden too and Dean is both desperate to see and to know if Sam's okay, check in on Sam, know what the hell is going on, and desperate to tip his head back and close his eyes and not look and push his conscious mind far, far away.

Gradually he can hear Sam babbling, "Fuck, you're really freaking out, aren't you? What would you even do if I did blow you? Shit, Dean, that what you're thinking about?" 

Dean hunches over and rests his face on Sam's shoulder, breathing and mouthing wet against his brother's cotton t-shirt and the warm thinner-than-his-own shoulder underneath it. He can't hold himself up, and he's not touching Sam, he's gripping the edge of his seat like if he touches his brother with his hands, on purpose, right now he'll be implicated in this crime. This is not a scene he planned on. Not one he asked for. _Fuck, what is Sam thinking?_

Sam's just got both hands working at Dean, forearms braced on top of Dean's thighs, and then Sam moves a hand and leans down and Dean's pulse is going a mile a minute.

Sam spits on his hand and then rubs his thumb over Dean's crown, slips his other fingers down to touch Dean's balls inside his shorts.

Dean makes this wholly undignified high-pitched noise. "Shit, Sam, gonna," and Sam pulls back, but keeps jacking Dean. Dean spurts over Sam's hand, jerking and twitching hunched over Sam's shoulder, and just like Dean had done to Sam the last time, Sam pulls Dean through it, wringing every drop till Dean knocks his hand away, swearing.

Sam gets up and, while Dean is still hunched over, still breathing hard, still unable to look his brother in the eye, puts a gentle hand on the side of Dean's jaw and neck briefly. Before Dean can knock that away too, he leaves. Dean's left tucking himself back inside his shorts, staring at the fire. 

It takes a storm breaking overhead, dry but so full of lightning the cracks and booms shake even him, to make him knock the fire apart and bury it in the dirt.

Sam's fallen asleep on the bed with a book, and Dean doesn't know how he can sleep through this noise, but he lies down curled on his side and drifts in and out of sleep, chased by dream phantoms. He thinks he hears the dog barking up a storm but when he looks she's gone somewhere, and the only sound is the wind in the trees.

-

The next day they're supposed to go get a call from Dad at the highway phone. Dean and Sam go together. On the way they talk a little about the fanged deer, the chupacabras, but most of it is in silence.

They get Dad's call. It's short.

"He's coming back tomorrow," Dean says to Sam. "And then we'll go."

"What about the weird deer? And the dog?" Sam says as they walk back.

"We don't even know what they are. We'll go out again tonight. And your dog can take care of herself. Seriously, Sam, you've seen her hunt." Looking at Sam's sad face makes Dean sad. It's not that he likes the dog that much.

"I just feel responsible for her."

"She'll be fine," Dean cajoles, and resolves to not mess with Sam too much for the foreseeable future, as much as he can help it. With Dad coming back and not knowing where they're going next, Sam's got a stressful time ahead. Dean doesn't want to make it any worse for him.

They go out into the woods again that evening, with the sun setting behind them, toting guns and following the dog.

They don't manage to find anything they're looking for, deer or chupacabra, no matter how far they go, and the dog just chases squirrels the whole time.

It'd be crazy to think that was the only one, but Dean doesn't know what else to think. He'll tell Dad when he comes, maybe he knows what they are, if they would ferret them out. Maybe the dog will help. 

"They must've left," Sam says.

"Left? More like we just can't find them."

"I dunno," Sam says. "Reggie isn't finding any. I've just got a feeling."

"You're just full of feelings," Dean jokes, and Sam punches his shoulder.

That night Dean says to Sam in the dark "Kinda gonna miss this." 

Sam makes a skeptical noise, but then says, "Yeah," and pushes his nose and forehead against the muscle of Dean's shoulder.

They lie there, close in a strangely normal way, and fall asleep like that.

-

The next morning there's a rumble of a motor, and Sam groans, but then the barking of dogs approaching the cabin, and Dean opens the door. Dog stays at the hearth.

A man's there, with a muddy yellow-brown beard, a bandana on his head with a camouflage-and-deer print on it, riding a loud motorcycle followed by a pack of dogs. They look just like Reggie – same markings.

"I've come for my dog," the man says over the engine's roar.

Sam and the dog come up to the door and the dog sits by Sam's leg.

"Thanks for looking out for her. What's your name, kid?" The dog lifts her head to be pet by Sam, then goes to the biker guy to get pet down by his heavy hand.

"My name's Sam. It was no problem," Sam says

Dean thinks the dog looks content. This doesn't seem shady, just… weird.

"Well, Sam, I owe you one," the guy says, then guns his engine. "Be seeing you."

"What's her name?" Sam shouts.

"She don't got one!" the biker yells back, and roars off, the dogs in hot pursuit.

They're left watching the trail of dust and listening to the happy yelps and barks of the dogs.

Dad gets them a few hours later. Their bags are packed, and the empty whiskey bottle is stashed in the back of the closet where they found it.

"Where to?" Dean asks.

"Northwest," Dad says.

Sam sighs a little relief. The hot weather that had held them in suspension breaks as they move down out of the mountains towards the Pacific coast. They're in the middle of a cloud bank, the precipitation barely precipitating. It hisses against the windshield and the tires, it soaks into Dean's dried-out sun-heated skin, cooling him and giving him the occasional chill. Dean can see Sam shivering in the back seat. This air is like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead.

-

When they stop that night in Oregon, Sam announces that he's leaving for college at Stanford. Tonight. Dad's barely had any time for some shouted ultimatums, Dean no time to catch his breath, before Sam's out the door, bags still packed.

Dean's driving after him now, after the delay of the shock, Dad's questions and accusations still ringing in his ears - _Did you know he was going to do this? What happened while I was gone? What does that boy get up to? He didn't say anything? Not even to you? That foolish -_

He hopes he'll find Sam before he decides to leave the road or finds a ride that isn't Dean.

Dean finally spots Sam on the roadside, nearly hidden in the darkness and mist. Sam's got his thumb stuck out, but when Dean approaches he seems to recognize the sound of their car and draws it back, tries walking further away from the road.

"Sam!" Dean shouts out the window. "It's just me."

Sam doesn't respond.

"Come on, at least let me drive you there."

"No."

"It's nighttime, there aren't any other cars coming by. Come on," Dean pleads

Sam keeps walking, Dean keeps driving alongside him.

After a minute or two of this, Sam still won't get in, so Dean pulls over, sending Sam scrambling off the shoulder yelling "Watch it!". Dean's not trying to run him off the road, he just parks, gets out and goes after Sam on foot. Sam faces him dead-on and yells, "Just leave me _alone!_ "

"Come on, Sam." Dean tries grabbing Sam's shoulder but Sam pushes his hand off. "You're not getting anywhere, I'm the only goddamn car on the road."

Sam keeps pushing and shrugging Dean's hands off .

"Please," says Dean. "I'm beggin' you."

Sam's face goes from angry and stony to twisted and sick. Like only anger had kept the fear and desperation and confusion at bay. Confrontation was what he was running from; now Dean gets past his shrugging, right as Sam's backed against a tree. He grabs Sam's shoulder, then takes his face between his hands roughly and kisses him.

Sam's thrashing against his grip, confused and biting both their lips, before Dean lets him push him off. "What the hell, Dean?"

"I can't – Sam, you can't go. I…" Dean can't finish any of his "I" statements. He has no fucking clue what to say about himself, so practiced in putting family first, family first, family first. There's a pull and a hurt and a need in him that he's slowly realizing has nothing to do with _family_ right now and it's making him sick.

"Are you drunk?" Sam asks.

It feels possible. "No." Dean reaches for Sam again and Sam flinches away. It's like a lightning bolt hits Dean, from above, like damnation from God himself.

"Dean, I can't." He's deathly calm and reasoning and it only makes Dean feel crazier. "You have got to let me go. I'm leaving."

Dean covers his face with his hands and runs them up and down, scrubbing at the wet in his eyes. He opens them and all these multicolored dots are flashing over Sam, who's looking at him from the higher ground of the tree roots, pitying and pleading and exhausted, like he has no energy for any other feelings. He's not running. He's not walking away. He's waiting for Dean to say something, give some sign. Later Dean will look back on this observation with hope, that Sam will not hate him for this _all_ his life.

"Can I at least give you a ride?" Dean asks.

A long pause: Sam isn't sure. Dean hates him so much right now, for being unsure about accepting a fucking ride. He hates Sam for making him love him, for making him crazy enough to stalk him out, for leaving all dramatic and shit and not give him or Dad any time to react. For running away like a child now, trying to walk away without saying goodbye.

"Yeah. Thanks," Sam says, after looking down the road where Dean came from. No more headlights. "Town's a few miles away. They have a bus there I can catch."

Dean opens his mouth. He's gonna try to persuade Sam to let him drive him all the way to the gates of Stanford. He'll make sure Sam's roommates aren't shitheads and make sure Sam has enough money for books and, shit. He'll promise not to touch Sam ever as long as he can see him again. He'll grovel for it. But nothing comes out, and Sam pointedly looks only at the road straight ahead.

They drive in silence for half an hour.

Sam gets out at a bus depot under a shelter, and Dean just waits at the curb in the car till the bus comes, staring at Sam the whole time to get him to get back in the car, it's raining, come on, I'll drive you to San Francisco or wherever.

The bus comes, and Sam gets on it.

After the bus is no longer in sight, Dean lets panic wash over him. Eventually, his vision clears. He runs the wipers for a couple passes, then puts the car in drive and heads back to his father.


	2. Part II

_"I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness."  
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground_

 

At a diner booth in Sheridan, Wyoming, Dean is goofing off looking at waitresses and fucking around. Sam's quickly running out of patience for him. Actually, Sam ran out of patience a thousand times already: on the bridge in Jericho, when Dad left the journal behind expecting them to follow, feeling Dean's eyes on the back of his neck for a week after Jess burned. It didn't rankle – mostly it was a comfort, though a bit uncanny, the presence of something old and beyond familiar changed by time. 

He was distracted by grief and the compulsion to find out everything that could be found out. He wore one of the firemen down and eventually quit asking them questions when the guy said he couldn't talk about it, the dead burnt girl he pulled from the building – there was nothing left to see, it was all on fire.  
Sam's eyes stung like smoke was in them. And Dean stayed back till Sam was staggering sleepless and vision blurred. Sam didn't sleep much anyway, even when Dean managed to drag him to a bed, a motel room. It was all Jess on the ceiling, Jess in flames, Jess horribly still with accusing eyes.

Sam woke screaming a few times, before Dean started waking him up before that point.

"Making noise in your sleep. Stop freaking me out," Dean said once, and Sam gave him the iciest look. Dean looked ashamed, and couldn't meet Sam's eyes again.

Sam couldn't bring himself to think about what Dean thought. Dean was honestly helpful, helpful as hell, but after the first couple of days, Sam had got a handle on crying every now and then and as his headache cleared and vision un-blurred he sobered up to the fact that there was nothing, no trail, no information. Just crowds of mourning friends, and the trappings of a life that no longer seemed real to him.

He put in the school paperwork to go on leave, paid his phone bill a few months in advance, while Dean questioned people diligently and dutifully.

There was nothing left in Palo Alto. The buildings felt made of cardboard, the palms – fucking palm trees – were oppressive. No such thing as life as usual he could return to, and no leads on Jess's death. Just the hunt and the road ahead.

"My brother here'll take a veggie omelet." Dean's remark is half a warning for Sam and half for the waitress. Sam likes Denver omelets and Jess likes waffles and Sam is getting used to bitter road coffee again. But his mind isn't on breakfast, breakfast is just a distraction, just as Dean's flickering smirk is a distraction, as his order is a distraction to Dean when he really wants to get that waitress's smile and sashay again.

Sam's looking for suspicious deaths in the newspaper, all right? He's working here.

"You're gonna go blind sticking your face that close to the paper," Dean says. "You need glasses?"

"No," says Sam, still scanning obits. "Veggie omelet?"

"You coulda interrupted."

"Ugh. I wouldn't want to come between you and Candy, 'n get your drool on me."

"That's rude, Sam. You didn't even look at her name tag. You can't just call people what you want."

Sam looks up. "Are you done?"

"What?"

Sam rolls his eyes. Dean's eyes are wide and innocent and his posture is leaning back, relaxed, hands open, one arm on the back of the booth. Like he's got all the time in the world – by the way he's looking at that waitress, time enough to get her number and meet her after her shift.

Sam's not sticking around for that.

"—not goin' anywhere." Sam tunes in halfway through whatever Dean's saying to him. "World isn't gonna end tomorrow."

"Whatever," Sam says in that way that means _just shut up_. The world is already ended, as far as he's concerned. He knows he's being melodramatic. He's entitled to it for the moment.

So now is when Dean's getting on one of his last nerves, and Sam is incredulous at how endless time must seem to Dean, how the road stretches out forever before him, and he doesn't have to plan anything, just takes what life gives him and rolls with the punches. It'd be mean to say Dean's got it easy, but if you take Dean's word for it, the way he acts all loose and free and downright easy for waitresses named Candy or Cindy or any red-blooded American name, he's living a simple life.

Sam's not jealous of Dean. He's scornful.

Carly – her name's Carly. Sam looks up to see her tag when she comes but he promptly forgets, mind like a sieve for the world's painful mundanities. Carly brings their omelets, Dean's with sausage links, and then comes back and warms up their coffees. Sam studies his. With the creamer in it, it looks yellow. He's suspicious of it.

Dean grabs a sausage with his fingers and bites it in half. Sam hasn't picked up his fork or touched his freshened coffee.

"You want one?" Dean points to his grey links with the half of sausage he has in his hand.

"No thanks," Sam says. He fiddles with his pen, tapping it against the cheap standard ceramic mug.

Dean looks at him, and Sam only glances up briefly, because sometimes it takes effort to meet Dean's gaze, but he can see it there - worry. Concern. Not the irritating kind which Dean, like all older siblings, will rub in his face because it shows he knows something better than Sam, but the kind that gets deeper than under Sam's skin, right up in his guts, tapping that spring of guilt at scrutiny. The kind that Dean doesn't show off but covers up, because it's big and heart-twisting and it fuels the intense look in his eye, keeps his wheels turning.

Dean covers it up quick, or, well, he looks away and goes back to eating. But it stays with Sam. It's the reason he sticks around.

-

Sam would be lying if he said he hadn't thought about death. In fact it would be unbelievable if he said it. All the while he questioned every firefighter who would put up with it, while he and Dean scoured the burnt-out place without saying a word, Sam's vision swimming and dark like being underwater. It was like being stranded at sea, waves of tears obscuring Sam's vision, his body hollow with hunger and nausea, his throat parched. Every night he dreamed of Jess on fire and woke up throat burning, Dean's hand shaking his shoulder. Even waking is a bizarre dreamscape, and by the time they leave, Sam's personal hell. He can't go back, not yet, maybe one day, maybe not ever. But he doesn't want to be anywhere but there.

He had thought for a second about trying to stay with Brady and sleep on his floor, taking housing's offer of another room, as if he could stay closer to the time before this happened, closer to any clues or leads. But Dean was back, and Sam knew that his search couldn't end here in Palo Alto. He felt compelled to go with Dean – not obligated, but drawn. 

Dean pitches in with no questions, no fights, barely any talking. It's what Sam needs and he knows Dean can tell. They don't exactly work together like a well-oiled machine, but the division of labor is efficient, and Dean gets him to eat some.

A whole week turned up nothing of any significance. Sam played every part and Dean his foil – boyfriend mad with grief, student investigating property damage, building inspector, reporter, comforting friend, whatever got them through the caution tape. Dean's fake badges helped a lot. Sam looked around the place, went wherever he thought Jess must have gone during the weekend they were in Jericho, all while trying to ignore what he knew already: he was a piece of the evidence. The dreams he's having now – they're the same as the dreams he had before. 

He almost thinks for a while that it's a trauma thing – Jess is burning, Jess was always burning, just as he sometimes forgets she's gone and hears her voice behind him in a group of students, sees her face in a crowd. His brain is making things up. It's permanently damaged. Smoke inhalation. Bizarre trauma. Paranoia – well, an entirely reasonable paranoia, and he has Dean to thank for at least reminding him that they do in fact live in a world where the supernatural happens, even though he sometimes is so angry that this isn't a dream, isn't something he can pinch himself and wake up from.

At least seeing Jess burning over and over again is something he can wake up from.

Dean wakes him up, reminds him the basic measures of living. He's gentle with Sam. It's not bizarre, it's just… been a long time. Hell, everything in the world is bizarre, and Dean is like returning to a home Sam had nearly completely denied. Different but the same. Riding shotgun in the Impala, the sound of her engine and her wheels, the tinted light through the windshield – it's all familiar but in this new way, without Dad. New, and raw, like Sam, so Sam clings to it.

They're leaving California, getting further and further, and Sam would drop off the spinning world, lose his grip, fly off the handle if it weren't for Dean, like nails in his feet. Dean making sure they have time and food to eat. Dean trying to deprive Sam of coffee once they've finished a hunt, to get him to sleep, no matter how awful it feels to Sam.

Has he always been so good at this? Sam wonders. Is this something Sam had forgotten, or used to take for granted? Or is it only happening more now that Sam has an even more tenuous grasp on reality?

-

A week later, they're heading for Wisconsin from Colorado after Dean checks up on something in Bozeman, Montana. Heading east on I-90, Sam is restless. The urge to keep moving is set in him after the initial disappointment of not finding Dad at Blackwater Ridge, feeling hemmed in by the forest and mountains. Leaving the woods for the flat wide-open plains scratches an itch. Sam's ashamed at how unfamiliar this part of the country became over time, but he's vulnerable to it. The open sky exposes him, and while the unchanging landscape does little to distract him from his persistent grief, he feels tiny beneath it. He can let it swallow him, occupy his mind as he stares out the window, still unable to sleep much.

When they're heading east out of Billings, Dean asks, "I-94 or I-90?"

Sam shrugs, still staring out the window.

"Wall Drug?"

"We're not tourists, Dean."

Dean turns back to the road, then laughs. "Remember that time I nearly lost you there?"

"Oh yeah, that was hilarious. I wasn't lost, I was eight years old and you ditched me."

"And you were looking at the rock collection books, oh my god. I convinced you jackalopes were real!"

Sam's cracking a smile now too. "Fuck you, they _were_ real!"

Dean groans. They're both remembering now - the hottest, worst day to be outside in South Dakota, so they hung out in Wall Drug as long as they could, till someone asked them where their dad was, and then they had to go walk around.

That night Dad brought back a passel of jackalopes, and the next morning while he was still asleep, Sam and Dean found them in a bag in the shower. Red blooded boys, their fascination overruled their disgust, and Sam remembers smothering a hysterical laugh at Dean, who was shocked then mollified.

That summer there had been some aggressive rodent attacks and reports of vampire bat bites, but no vampires or vampire bites. Apparently the normally docile jackalopes had begun to sprout fangs, Dad said after making sure they hadn't touched the teeth.

"The badlands," Sam says. "Let's go to the badlands."

Dean shrugs, and when they come to where the highways split he takes the southern route, towards Wall and I-90 and the badlands of South Dakota.

The weather feels like no season at all. It's overcast here, the grey of the sky dulling the grey matte of the rocky landscape around them. It's still huge sky, though, and when Sam walks up to the overlook, he feels like he's on the moon, if the moon were on earth.

It's a bizarre place, and Sam has the itch to camp there, of all things. He's been occupied looking through Dad's notebook, he could spend all day with his head in that thing, forget the world outside.

They've got beef jerky and jugs of water and a bag of apples from the grocery store back in Wisconsin.  
Dean protests they don't have the gear but they've got blankets to lie on, that's all they need, right?

"If I get bit by a vampire jackalope..." Dean mutters, and Sam snorts.

Sam reads John's journal till it gets dark, and Dean cleans the guns. There's no one else around. It's technically a camping area but they're off-season and there's only one RV parked by the hookup.

They don't have wood to build a fire or anything so they just watch the sun set. Dean complains about being bored for a bit but Sam ignores him. Dean gets up to walk around. Sam just soaks it in.

Eventually the sun sets, they divide up the apples and jerky, and the stars begin to come out. The stars in the middle of South Dakota are mind-blowing.

"Like being on the moon," Sam says, and Dean nods, agreeing. That's all that needs to be said.

That night when he's hovering on the edge of sleep for hours he hears the bellow and roar. _Thunderstorm,_ he thinks, in a half sleep. red lights glow before and behind his eyes, and the rumbling of hooves and panting of breath. He can feel it hot on his neck.

His heart pounds like he's running, afraid something'll catch him or catch up to him, or he is already caught up in it. It isn't fear, it's panic and exhilaration, mindless and pure. It isn't fear.

Sam flies awake with Dean's hand on his shoulder and the cool nip of night air on his feverishly sweating face. Dean's leaning over him, and Sam's breath catches at his silhouette. They're pressed up side to side, rolled in blankets, boots on, and Sam can't see Dean's face in the dark but he can hear him breathing, can feel him warm and solid next to him. An anchor in a sea of night.

Everything around them is dead silent - and then, a crack of thunder, a low booming roll through the sky with a distant flash of lightning in the distance. 

"Gonna rain soon," Dean says, and Sam groans. He'd actually dropped off for once, and not dreamt of Jess. He shivers to cast the thought off, as if he could summon a dream by thinking of it.

With a dream that haunts him like that one, maybe he could.

Sam gets the back seat and Dean the front, and Sam makes Dean push the seatback down. Dean looks at him funny but doesn't argue, and Sam feels a surge of gratitude as they lie down and he knows Dean is there, within arm's reach, to ground him. Gratitude and relief so strong he could cry, but he's addled and sleepless and been doing a lot of crying in the past month. Instead of crying, Sam listens to Dean's breathing even out as the rain begins to fall, big drops spaced out, so fat they sound like hail. He drops off again to the rumbling thunder and clatter of rain on the car roof.

Sam only gets a few hours of sleep. The light wakes him, and he decides he'd really like a meal eventually, and he's sure Dean will complain if he doesn't get one soon.

Sam drives them out through the park in the early hours with the radio on quiet while Dean sleeps in the back. Johnny Cash comes on, singing Ghost Riders in the sky. Sam's dream occurs to him suddenly, something he'd totally forgotten, or that had blended into the backdrop of the entire bizarre place. Raindrops like galloping, lightning cracking and sparking like horseshoes on rock, and thunder.

The Black Hills are sacred. Sam is newly open to thoughts like this in a way he wasn't before. Before, he was skeptical of what their father told them, how he knew, whether he was as right as he thought. Now Sam is downright credulous. His life has acquired a new need for magical thinking. He'll take what the world will give him. He's hungry for it.

He keeps the dream or memory, tucks it away, and keeps driving towards Wisconsin.

-

Before Stanford, Sam was always so conscious of how fucked up his whole family situation was, so focused on getting out of it (as if that were really possible) that he may not have thought hard enough about how hard it would be to escape without a lot of fucked up baggage himself. Before Stanford, Dean's presence was something he took for granted, and when Sam left Dean left a gap like the gap a lost tooth leaves, just asking to be poked and prodded half-consciously.

Dean called him a year into his time at Stanford and asked when he had to be out of the dorms, like he and Dad were going to come pick him up, pull up to the curb and honk their horn or something. Sam's heart was beating so fast, like a small animal or a bird, a fight or flight response that those days tended towards flight. He said, "I've got a job here. I'm staying."

Sam was working at the library then, at least for the time being, with a couple weeks of law office assistant internship to look forward to that summer. It cost plenty of money for a place within a long bike ride or commuter distance, so he was still trying to decide between splurging on a bike or relying on the shitty but cheap transit system.

Meanwhile Dean on the phone had been doing his best not to sound belligerent or disappointed or shit, Sam didn't even know. He was too distracted, his heart going a million miles an hour at the sound of his brother's voice. He had a lot of memories he'd been carrying around for a year but the one to surface then was of course the last time his heart was kicking his chest like this, the last time he saw Dean and Dean had put his hands on him and shoved and pulled, and kissed him up against a tree. Sam didn't know what it meant, and a whole year later he still couldn't think about it long enough to get it.

"Me and Dad are -"

At that Sam snapped, "I'm not gonna come _home_. Dad doesn't want to see me."

"He didn't mean what he -"

"Then he should nut up and apologize himself. But I'm still staying here. I've got a job and an internship and I feel like I'm really living, Dean, like I'm alive and the world is mine, nothing holding me back -"

Dean made a sound on the other end like a "huh" or like being punched in the gut, as Sam trailed off into breathing hard.

Static interrupted the line and Dean was probably driving, moving in and out of range. Sam paced to the other end of the room by reflex or momentum, but the line was dead and Sam couldn't know who hung up, accidentally or not, or who should call back. Never did know. 

That was the first time they talked since the summer before, and the last time before Dean showed up in his living room in the middle of the night to go looking for their father.

-

That night, when Sam finally dozes off, he's feeling sweaty and uncomfortable, and finds himself rolling around twisted in sheets or blankets. They're tight around him, trapping his dick against his stomach. Every time he rolls to get free of the blankets it presses tighter, throbs a little harder, till he's panting for cool air and to get his hands free to touch himself. But he can't manage to surface.

Then there are other hands there, someone in the sheets with him, stroking him, and Sam manages to get his hands untangled. He can't see anything distinctly, fuzzy shapes not really coming into focus. He thinks it's Jess. He imagines it's Jess, but he manages to get his hands on shoulders as the hands reach low onto his thighs, and the shoulders are thick and muscular and strong.

He feels stubble on a strong jaw as he palms up, short hair under his fingers.

Then the veil of sheets lift – his brother's face, his eyes and his white grinning teeth, his brother Dean who bows his head and vividly takes the head of Sam's dick in his mouth, his lips wrapped around it, tongue hot underneath. He's looking at Sam, he can see Sam, and that sends a jolt through Sam. Dean's holding Sam's hips with his warm hard hands and sucking Sam's dick and Sam feels so fucking - 

Sam wakes up gasping into his pillow and achingly hard against the mattress. He's half-deadened one of his arms, which is also trapped under him, and the room is pitch black.

Trying to catch his breath, he gathers that he's still in a motel room, Dean is still asleep in the bed next to him, and the red digital alarm clock display glares 4:21 AM at him.  
Sam groans, his stomach is doing nervous flips. Dean stirs, but seems to be still asleep.

Sam shuts himself in the bathroom and turns the glaring white fluorescent light on. The white fixtures reflect and amplify and Sam tries to adjust his vision as fast as he can, to erase the images of the dream from his head.

"It's normal," he says to himself in the mirror. He splashes his face with cold water, and says again, "It's just normal." He knows that dreams don't mean what they say, that his brain is sex-starved, that it can fill in any face.

But the image still imposes itself, Dean's mouth open on him, the whites of his eyes.

Sam's not going to get any more rest tonight, and the likelihood of disturbing dreams these days is too high to risk it. He gets dressed hurriedly in the dark, grabs the keys, and drives out.

He'd rather go to a diner, get the people and the ambiance and the tones and shapes of the waking world to reshape his concept of reality right now. But he can't see any 24-hour places around, so he picks up coffee from the single parking-lot coffee stand he saw when they arrived here in Kingman, Kansas, late the night before. Nowhere else is open for takeout coffee around 5 am, and he got lucky with this one. What a crappy little town. 

Just the day before, they said goodbye to Missouri Moseley and left their childhood home in Lawrence. Sam's now seen his mother, the first and only time in his memory. A billion questions have been flying around Sam's head ever since, but they haven't so much settled as been shoved out temporarily in the pale dawn light, while Sam is trying to shake the sleepy weirdness of his dream.

He grabs the newspapers next to him, tries to scan for anything that looks like a hunt, the sort of hunt Dad would go after. All the while in his mind is _where would Dad be_ , but all he can think of for that is _where would the next case be_ , because Dad is a hunter and follows the hunting life when he's got any purpose at all. He doubts there's any hunter he knows he could get the whereabouts of John from these days. Dean checked in where he could, but from the sound of it, their dad wasn't friends enough with anyone lately for him to have checked in with them since Jericho.

No, hunting is the closest he can be to putting himself in their dad's shoes. It drives him crazy but on a morning like this it's soothing, and he can see how Dean would rather fall back on this than worry endlessly.

Dean, Dean, Dean – even here his head can't stop bringing Dean up. Still… a dream like that? He hasn't – nothing like this. He hasn't been thinking about it. He didn't mean to this time.

In half an hour he hasn't made any progress, but he's woken up, watched the sun rise over the golden grassy fields. He heads back to the coffee place to get two more, one for him and one for Dean, and then back to the motel.

At the ungodly hour of 5:45, Sam walks into their room where Dean is. "Morning, sunshine," he cracks wryly, and he can see that Dean was startled by him coming in by the way Dean is already half-crouched on his knees and elbows. He blearily cranes his neck and looks over his shoulder to see Sam. He's still on guard, caught in a vulnerable moment or the unease of a dream, and it sets Sam right back..

Dean's got a hand under his pillow and Sam's sure he knows what's under there – his big knife he insists on sleeping with or maybe even a gun. But then Dean's eyes un-squint, and he recognizes Sam, and his body relaxes. Sam can see the muscles in his thighs go from taught to resting. 

Sam doesn't really get to see Dean like this. Like the knife under Dean's pillow, his brother is guarded waking and sleeping. Sam's the vulnerable one, lashing out in his sleep, ruled by his dreams.   
This gentleness is new gentleness. Here, Dean, with his worn shirt stretched over his back, seems more soft than strong.

Sure, Dean lying on top of the covers like this, wearing clothes like this, back to Sam, it should be normal. Sam's become an expert on normal life at Stanford, but coming back to Dean, not just after years gone but even after this morning he finds himself grasping for straws, _did he always look at me so close? Did he always worry like that? When did his legs look like that?_

Sam knows his vision is narrowing, but this closeness with Dean hasn't felt so intimate since – well, the summer before. Years before. A place Sam has always been terrified of going in his mind, because he never wanted to return to his childhood.

It's a new feeling, he supposes, his skin hot and tight, something lighter than lust but a distinct curiosity sitting restless in his belly. The desire that wakes in him is something he can't get anywhere else, because it's a desire for intimacy - touch, bare skin, being able to forget himself. It's missing Jess that overwhelms him, that much is clear. For a couple years he'd been used to her touch, and to lose that comfort and need it the most at once…

He just wants to slide up behind Dean, nestle against his broad back, feel the curve of Dean's legs against his, press Dean's broad shoulders down to the bed and wrap his hands around his brother's biceps, push his nose behind Dean's ear and smell the sweat there –

Sam sits and hands Dean his coffee and tries to talk business around his shock of longing. He's honestly never felt like this about Dean before in his life. It's not a willful thing. The desire wells up in him, unasked.

An hour later, Dean is eating hashbrowns and Sam's appetite hasn't kicked in yet. He's been thinking. It's hard to stop.

Maybe he has felt some way about Dean before, if he's honest. They've messed around before, right before he left for Stanford, but Sam had preemptively decided that he didn't want to think about or process what he did. He spent years tending that summer's burial, making sure it stayed dead. Some Freudian kind of unconscious concentration to not look at it had warped him till he found himself formed around the shape of it, found the irritating grain of desire and healed the wound by pearling himself over it.

But that summer is years behind them, now. Coming back to his brother in their childhood home of a car sometimes made Sam feel like a teenager again. Of course he's realizing Dean has moved on, while Sam is feeling the past's return like a hard undertow, pulling him under and in.

Sam is fucked up primarily. It's just another 'fuck you' from the universe that he's gotta be fucked up about Dean too.

-

They're driving fast away from another hunt, sliding out of town down main street. Sam is gazing at the quaint shops, sun-drenched like a seaside town, broad daylight making every bleached storefront blur in his vision, become one.

Then he sees her, a pillar of white, looking right at him while every other passerby doesn't seem to notice. She's standing stock still on the corner, hair long, chin inclined. _Jess_.

Sam reels. His head spins. he clutches at his knees, at the door, craning his head and mouth wide open.  
 _Why, Sam?_ her voice calls.

Sam gasps.

_It's too late now. I already know._

Her white dress glares and flares in the noon sun, blowing up like white-hot flames around her. She winks, and then she's just _gone_.

 _"The hell?!"_ Dean shouts, voice serious and outraged. Sam whips his head around to look at him so hard he nearly gets whiplash. Dean's looking at him with wide eyes. _You saw it?_ Sam wonders. _You saw her too?_

 _"Why didn't you tell me?"_ Dean's eyes are wide and glaring and he's not looking at the road. Someone has to be looking at the road, Dean's driving here! But Sam can't look. He can't look away from Dean's accusing glare.

_You're a freak._

Sam's whole body jolts, and the sudden weight of Dean's hand on his shoulder is heavy, nearly jostling, pushing towards his neck. The car isn't moving, Sam's staring at the ceiling and then at the dash, and Dean's hand is on his collarbone, pressing him back to the seat.

They're not leaving Charlie's place in Toledo, Ohio. That was months ago. They're leaving Max Miller's stepmother in Saginaw. The situation is reversed: here Dean's the one who nearly got killed and Sam's the one who saved him. Sam's terror at his strangely prophetic dreams – visions now – is less wild and more certain, but no smaller a fear.

Sam wonders about Dean watching him sleep. Used to be like Dean was waiting for him to break down and cry, and he'd be there with his overprotective instinct to make Sam _slow down_ or _open up_ ; now his watchfulness carries the tint of fear. Sam could be a bomb waiting to go off, but Dean won't admit it. Sam's the one filled with fear, Dean the one nay-saying all of it but watching, watching. Sam's waiting for the next shoe to drop, and he thinks Dean is going to watch him till he can say definitively _see, told you so, you're not going to go dark side. Nothing's gonna happen. Just relax._

"Hey," Dean says, and when Sam looks over he expects to see them wide and fearful, dark and accusing, like in his dream. But it's surprising, it's strange, not like that. It's not what he expects, so he has a hard time identifying it on Dean. How is Sam supposed to distinguish between these kinds of worry? His grasp on reality and goodness relies right now on whether Dean is worried that Sam is doing well, or if he's going to do evil. 

Dean's still looking at him as he blinks the sleep out of his eyes. Like Dean can figure it out, like he could see anything there and is waiting for Sam to deal with it, to ask forgiveness, to make amends, to confess, all on his own while Dean watches silent.

Sam covets secrets, things that are his and no one else's, even Dean's. He doesn't want to be wholly absorbed into the hunting life. He wants to remember Stanford and his dream of a normal life, because they really made him happy. And yet, having Dean here, the only person he can trust with the confession of what he's seen in his visions, what he's moved with the power of his mind – he couldn't tell anyone else. And now he's got no chance to. It's only him and Dean, on the road. 

He suspects Dean likes it that way.

For a long time, the time that Dean kissed him was something Sam didn't want to think about, not at all. It was like a seal on the summer, locking it away into territory too strange to acknowledge. Sam had abstracted it to a manipulative move, cynical or sincere, maybe even calculated. He knew what it meant: a plea to stay.

Even now, Dean's hand lingering on his shoulder is both something Sam prickles against as an older-brother gesture, something Sam appreciates as a gesture of love not control, and something Sam twists to use as material to get him off at night. Imagining that hand not on his shoulder but his bare skin, on his hip, on his dick.

"Sam?"

Sam looks up. Dean's still looking at him like that.

"What'd you dream about?" he asks.

Sam shakes his head.

He wishes he could go back, before he'd met Max Miller, when he'd only suspected his bad dreams meant so much more than bad dreams. When they dropped Charlie off back in Toledo after defeating Mary's spirit, Sam had said to comfort her, "Sometimes bad things just happen."

Dean had smacked his shoulder gently and said "'S good advice."

Tender joking in the aftermath of a hunt well-done, but Sam doesn't actually believe what he said, not the way Dean wanted him to, no matter how much Sam entertains him.

Because nothing just _happens_ in Sam's life. He knew something bad was going on when Jess died the same way their mom did. He just didn't know how all the pieces fit together. But these dreams, and the hard fact that he and Dean live in a world where death is not an end for restless spirits, where the bad you do will come back to make a monster out of you – Sam is not the same as the random victims they meet, the families he'd like to console. Bad things don't _just happen_ to Sam Winchester. Bad things have always happened. Bad things will continue to happen, and Sam's hanging his hopes on killing the demon that devastated their family.

-

The night that Dean rescues him from that creepy-ass cannibal family and they walk miles to their car still injured, Sam's ready to sleep for a million years. When he lies down, though, he's sore enough that it presents some obstacle. For god's sake, he's exhausted. He's got his brother beside him and a shitty fast-food meal in his stomach that tasted gourmet with the freedom that afforded it, but now it's like a greasy brick as ever.

Sam tries, after months of being unable to get off, touching himself again. For ages, in depression, he could barely get it up and was even uninterested, only resorted to it as a release of tension, a way of trying to get to sleep.

It's strange and aching. He's not sure what to think about. The first thing to come to mind is Jess, which sometimes feels good, remembering her, but he always gets too sad to go anywhere with it. No anonymous face nor his own formless pleasure will work. So instead that night his mind slips into the most fucked up shit, the worst fantasies, and that night he just lets it go. He slicks up his palm and thinks of Dean's hands on his hips and the shape of his brother's lips, and what it would be like, Dean blowing him, pressing him down to the bed, or against a wall, holding Sam down like he wants this, like he really wants this bad.

Spitting in his palm and thinking about Dean's saliva, Dean using his hand to cup Sam's balls, Dean pushing him down on a bed and then Dean underneath him – Sam comes hard and unexpected, nearly painful still, but it fucking works, what the fuck. What the _fuck_.

It works again the next night, Sam slamming into overdrive just as fast, coming like it's been months. All this, while Dean sleeps one bed over. Just this way.

Sam's pretty sure Dean hears him at night. They've kept it sort of private for a while, Sam traumatized and Dean treating him gently, questionable intimacy not on the table. A mutual respect for privacy and the unspoken acknowledgement that Sam is a fragile fucking flower – that's what these past few months have been like, sometimes Sam feels like. In a way it's terrible, having their inhibitions up like among strangers, but in another way Sam's been grateful for it.

Sam lets his fervor settle into the pit of his stomach, because to get through the day he has to treat everything as fuel – pain, fear, anger, longing. It settles back into the form it grew from, a heated fixation and tunnel vision to keep a hand on Dean to keep steady, keep an eye on him to keep him safe. And then at the end of the day, in the dark or in the shower when Dean isn't around or aware, Sam can touch himself and think of his brother touching him, getting him off.

Maybe this is what Dean was looking forward to so much when he didn't know Sam was leaving for Stanford, when Sam was desperate as hell to leave the life. Not every moment but the ones where they make a good team.

Figures Sam would find some way of messing it up and making it sick again.

  
-  
-  
-  


_"To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise."  
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground  
_

 

As hard as he tries, Dean can't convince Sam to stay a while with Sarah Blake, Sam's insistent on getting out of there after the second night.

"What, she more than you bargained for, Sammy? Always said you were a prude," Dean teases, feeling good, though uneasy that he's putting more importance on this than Sam still.

Truth is, Sam's the one dragging them out of there, but Deans' the one who still feels bad about dragging Sam away from his life at Stanford with Jess, his good life, the life he would have led if he had kept that innocence. But Dean is needy. Needy for companionship, for company – like he said at the start, he could do it alone. He just doesn't _want_ to.

What a selfish older brother.

"I just want to focus on finishing this thing with Dad and the demon now, Dean. Do what needs to be done first. Besides," he says, looking up from his computer to tap the sheaf of papers Deans put on his hotel room table. "You're looking at cases. Like I'd let you go off on a hunt without me."

Dean smiles despite himself. It's cute to hear that coming from Sam.

"What happened to the old you? Hate hunting, do anything to get out of it."

Sam shrugs. "I know what's important right now."

All in all, Dean's feeling unsettled. Sam may blame himself for not telling Jess, for not doing something, but Dean's the one who could have left well enough alone. Sam knows hunting – who's to say he couldn't have saved Jess, if he would have stayed and not followed Dean that weekend. They're hardly getting any closer to finding the demon – nothing Dad isn't taking care of himself. The only good they've done is go on a few hunts, hunts Dean would have done by himself anyway.

 _And been far more miserable?_ the weasely voice in his head asks. _No. You wanted him with you._

Dean would trade his own happiness for Sam's, even if it won't fix things now. He's done it before and he'll do it again. He always makes it work.

He can't let Sam know about stuff like this – he knows how mad Sam would be, how he'd say Dean was full of bullshit, which was fair enough generally. Only once does Dean give a hint of this sentiment, another vague stray comment about how Sam would be better off if Dean hadn't come and gotten him from Stanford that night.

And Sam, who before had said _I don't blame you_ , instead with that same quiet calm resignation and acceptance says, "If you hadn't come you wouldn't have been there to pull me out of the fire." His eyes are dark, heavy and sweet and serious leveled at Dean, a look with too much in it for Dean to take. Sam's acknowledging and remembering what Dean told him when they had to go to their old home in Lawrence to gank that poltergeist. Stanford was only the second time Dean pulled him from the fire.

It's not that Sam sees the best in him. But Dean knows Sam just doesn't see the worst.

-

Dean's been really good about laying off of Sam regarding the whole Sarah thing, if you ask him. Sam spent his time and Dean has been prodding Sam for details, but Sam really got the endorphins and stick out of his ass the way Dean had said he was hoping. Sam's so calm and collected that he didn't even respond to Dean's teasing, just ignored him or smiled mysteriously.

"Oh, I see, don't kiss and tell," Dean says in what's supposed to be a mocking tone, but all Sam does is turn his newspaper over and hum "Mmhm".

Dean's getting itchy. Restless.

So he says, "Let's go hunt the black dog of the Hanging Hills."

It's not like he wants to get out of there, but if Sam's so determined, then who is Dean to stand in his way? As long as he doesn't sound so fucking miserable and repressed when he jacks off now. Sam hasn't been the most subtle of late about his bedtime rituals, something Dean swears he only notices because he's so fucking careful not to invade Sam's space with his own. Figures, Dean's the over-careful one when it comes to Sam's privacy but Sam doesn't even think of it, just barges in even if Dean doesn't happen to be present, even if Dean's not actually asleep. Sam could be a little considerate, considering their past issues with privacy. That was a summer hard to forget.

Dean hopes the stick up Sam's ass will be better now at least, even if he has to listen to his brother wring it out. Now that Sam's done some loosening up, after he met Sarah, had his relatively-casual thing, Dean's got hopes for the kid's future, despite the fact that Dean knows Sam doesn't do casual – he's always so serious about chicks.

That's half of why Dean doesn't push it with Sam. He knows that's what Sam really wants – to settle down in a normal life. Unlike Dean, no sir. He did get serious, with Cassie, and he couldn't handle it. The only thing Dean gets serious enough to probably put before hunting is family. Girls have never been in the same realm; he can't let them be. Hunting's his life, he can't settle down just yet. Can't let himself start to think that way. That's when it gets too hard. 

"I'm jealous of you, you know, Sam," he says later, after they've driven out of town, headed south. "You were on your way. You had the big come-up. You were going to settle down and marry that girl –"

"Are you still harping on – wait, not Sarah, you mean Jessica?" Sam's leaning towards the window with his nose practically pressed against it, watching the trees go by. "Dean, why are you saying this?"

"I don't want to prod old wounds. But you always knew you could leave and make your own life, Sam. You saw a way out of hunting and into a family, a good one."

".. Yeah," Sam says.

"Well, don't think I don't want that too." Of course it's easier to talk like this when they're not facing each other. "I know I've talked shit but I gotta take care of this family before the next, you know?"

Sam says, after a pause for the silence, "Yeah, I know." His voice is soft, quiet. Dean feels like shit for pulling this out suddenly.

"I'm just…" Dean coughs. "Real proud of you. No matter how pissed I was when you left." He's trying to salvage the situation, desperately.

"I… thanks, I guess. If that's the right thing to say."

Dean grunts, which he hopes sounds as approving and accepting as he needs it to right now.

Sam sighs, which is standard, and bundles up his coat under his head against the window, and that's the end of that conversation.

-

Dean may be regretting his choice of hunt. Despite the claims that the dog is responsible for six whole deaths, a claim popular enough to end up on the Wikipedia page for this place, all the locals love the legend and have adopted this legendary death omen as a sort of mascot. He doubts anyone would willingly help him answer the question of how to kill it.

"So the first time you see it, you have good luck?" Sam asks. Two forty-something women in hiking boots nod vigorously and smile at him. Dean rolls his eyes.

"I dunno, Dean," Sam says when they part ways with the hikers and head further up the hill. "You sure this is really the kind of vicious monster we should be hunting? Maybe we should come back when we're old and can't hunt anything else."

"Shut up, Sam," Dean says, and Sam fucking _laughs_. The ass. Dean has to bite his cheek to keep from snapping back. He's really annoying like this.

Then Sam smirks cheeky at him and starts walking up the mountain backwards just so he can grin at Dean, who went and wore two shirts today when he shoulda worn one like Sam, and he's sweating like a pig. The stupid gleam in Sam's eye, the gall of it - Dean gives up. "Man, we shoulda been getting you laid on the regular, Sammy, you're a fuckin ray of sunshine like this."

"You shut your mouth," Sam says in remarkable good humor, and Dean, because the uphill trail is really not so hard a climb, says, "Make me," and jostles Sam with his hip and shoulder as he passes him.

A few months ago Sam might not have reacted, either slow reflexes or a sad lack of humor, but now? Before Dean can move far enough ahead, Sam swings an arm out and hooks his fingers over the waist of Dean's jeans, and Dean nearly falls over his own feet trying to walk in place.

Sam overtakes him, and Dean lets him win the race to the top.

When Dean makes it up at last, Sam is out by the edge of the cliff, trying to look down below. Dean has to restrain himself from saying like some worrying nag, _get back here, don't go so close to the edge, you're making me dizzy_. Because he is. Watching Sam there is making him physically dizzy, or maybe it's how close Dean is to the edge himself. Still, Sam is closer, and that's unacceptable.

"The Hanging Hills," Sam says, neck arching out to crane over and look down on the forest below.

"Fucking creepy name," Dean says, and a breeze chills his sweaty torso.

"It's just the shape of the cliffs."

"Dude, I know." Dean's fingers twitch for the back of Sam's jacket to pull him back, till Sam backs away carefully.

"Let's head out towards the Rockies next," says Sam. "Real big mountains. Or, Sierra Nevada, out near Yosemite, further north by Tahoe. Had a friend invite me skiing once, it was awesome."

The hills are like cliffs, they can see for a long was off them but it's all trees.

"Skiing?" Dean shakes his head. He's thinking not of Sam's preppy rich college friends, but the woods up near Tahoe, before Sam went to Stanford, before Dean knew Sam was going to Stanford. Dean's always had cause to worry about Sam, and he feels like a bad person thinking that, right now, there's no way he'd trade this last year with Sam for another year like when they were teenagers. As much as they're going crazy looking for their father, unrooted in the world and Sam still affected by grief, still hung up on whatever it is – at least Sam can't fight with Dad when Dad's not here. At least they've grown up some, less tangled up and less claustrophobic about it.

 _So why keep thinking about it?_

Dean ignores his snide inner voice and walks up towards the edge, down where there are real rocky crevasses. "All right, we gotta go check out where those people died, and then we'll see how seriously you take these hills."

-

They make their way, skidding through scree down the crevasses to where most of the deaths were reported. Fallen, mostly, one or two brained by rocks in a slide – Dean found the records.

"So the first guys died in the 1800s," Sam says.

"Dude, I know," says Dean. "I'm the one who suggested this case."

"I'm just saying, when was the last time anyone died here?"

"You think I'd come in here without doing the research first?" Dean looks back.

Sam makes a face. "Dean, you always shoot first and ask questions later."

"Not the same," Dean retorts. "Anyway, this is where they fell, every time. Seems like this dog has a M.O. we can count on."

They climb down to the crevasses, and then down between the rock walls of one, marked as passable, though not all of them are. The walls of the cliffs they were on rise high above them, blocking the light. Not only that, but the sky is starting to cloud over.

Someone kicks a rock down below and they hear it knock and clatter, the echoes rumbling ominously. Dean shudders. He's not particularly afraid of heights, but knowing what it'd be like to fall to your death here – it's pretty horrifying. They're on a slope but if the rocks are loose…

"Hey Sam," he says, craning his head back to look at the top of the cliffs. "Think it looks like - Shit."

"What?" Sam asks, but before Dean can tell him not to look up, he does.

So they both see the little black dog at the top of the ridge. Small and curly-haired, it's moving its head, facing right at them. It looks like it's barking, but Dean can't hear any sound. He just gets these fucking chills up and down his spine. _Like someone walked over your grave,_ he thinks, and isn't that just fucking perfect.

"What the hell?" Sam asks.

"Goddamn it, Sam," Dean says.

"Well you didn't fucking say not to _look!_ "

And the dog is gone.

"We are not going up there to hunt it," Dean says. "I was _going_ to say it looks like rain, but then… shit." He kicks another rock and it goes ricocheting, missing Sam and tumbling down the jumble of scree before dropping off another cliff-like edge. "I wasn't expecting to see it during the day, you know? Since all the other deaths were at night."

Sam sighs longsufferingly. "Brilliant."

"Hey, shut up. Anyway, black dogs, they're usually more like spirits during the day, right? They can't actually attack you then."

"Since when?"

"Should be in Dad's journal. It was a hunt we did about a year ago. Dad shot right at it and the bullets went right through, but not at night."

"Well," says Sam, slow and considering. "If we have good fortune now, wouldn't you think we'd be able to kill the dog?"

"Sam. We're just going to see it again and then fall to our deaths if we go up there. No. I don't think so."

"Then what?"

"Keep your eyes down, head down the hill, and then… I wanna play a little poker."

The rain starts falling as they head back towards the car.

-

"Think we're gonna get lucky tonight, Sammy?" Dean says under his breath as they walk into the bar.

"You're ridiculous," Sam snorts. "I'll play pool or darts or whatever, but we're on a case, man. No hooking up." He doesn't say _enough, Dean, it's Sam_ , which Dean takes as a sign that Sam is relaxed out of his mind. They sit at the bar and order two beers.

"Oh, if only my little brother were so generous to me as I was to him last week."

"You're a crazed sex-maniac."

Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam and licks his lips. Sam sputters, turning red, turning to hide his laughter in his shoulder. "The night's young," Dean says, grinning. "I can't be embarrassing you that bad already."

Sam swings his foot out to kick Dean's ankle, too speechlessly amused, his eyes glittering dark from under the shadow of his hair.

Dean feels buzzed already, heady with Sam's attention. "What do you say, you beat these guys at pool while I pick us up a pair of chicks to take back to the motel, and we keep our luck till tomorrow night?" He winks at a cute blonde who walks by and she smiles back.

"Oh no no no you don't," says Sam, grabbing Dean's arm to turn him back towards the bar, away from any more girls walking by. "Just us and that hunt tonight."

"You sure?"

Their beers clatter onto the bar, and Sam grabs his, takes a long drink from it. "I'll make do."

Dean feels a heat in his belly, letting his gaze linger as Sam takes a second drink, till he pulls off the bottle and says, "What?"

Dean mentally kicks himself and looks at his own beer.

It's not that he didn't realize he was staring. Or that he didn't think Sam noticed. He had fallen into those rhythms of flirting that came so easy to him, around chicks, yeah, but sometimes also around Sam. He was getting all those signals from Sam and just responding like a social cue, a biological imperative, that chemistry that happens without trying. Old perverted habits.

"Nothin'," he says, and tips his own beer back. _Sam is not flirting with you. Sam is not asking you to flirt with him. Don't fucking flirt with your brother at a bar._ "What's the pool crowd look like tonight?"

So Sam takes darts and Dean takes pool, and they hustle the shit out of these guys at the bar, and joy of joys, part of their great luck is that the guys don't even know they're being hustled.

They walk away with thick wallets. "Good cash money!" Dean says, and Sam laughs.

They find midnight breakfast a diner, the best they've had for weeks – months! Sam says – and then, because Sam and Dean agree that delaying any longer would be pretty unethical, they decide to head back to the Hanging Hills while it's still dark night.

Sam's theorizing in the passenger seat, this brilliant roll of thought spilling out into the night. The wet wind is blowing in their windows but it stopped raining while they were inside gambling.

"It just figures, right, that the creature would show its weakness in its strongest, most aggressive state. Like the striga, right?"

"Only preys at night"

"And the striga's maybe a higher form of monster, you know? Since it's a witch, it thinks and calculates and knows it has to minimize its weakness. Or builds up its powers through time – that's the thing. Monsters don't necessarily get more powerful over time. There's no learning or growing experience from sending a few people falling off cliffs."

"All right, Sammy, we can't start underestimating this thing."

They cross their fingers not to see the dog as they edge along the steeper inclines. Dean's heady feeling of luck is buoying him up along with his inability to see how truly immediate and steep the drop is.  
He stops near the top, and since he's in the lead, Sam comes up behind him. Dean feels the heat of Sam's body close up against his back, all the more assuring with the chilly air.

"I've been thinking, what if this one's not a real black dog? Like, what if it's not dangerous, it's just an omen?"

Sweat's dripping down Dean's neck with the exertion of climbing. "It's a little late to think of that _now_ , Sam. Anyway, we'll see, when we find it again. It's nighttime now, remember?"They reach the top, and after doing a quick sweep, turn around to descend again quickly.

Their last piece of good fortune is that they are very successful at seeing the black dog again.

Dean spots it not in the beam of his flashlight, but just outside the pool of light it casts. Its eyes shine just beyond the illuminated area. It's looking right at them.

Dean hadn't heard it bark before up on the ridge, and it still doesn't bark, but an unearthly rasping death-rattle fills the air.

Dean wonders if his good luck will hold if he keeps the animal outside his circle of light. He tries to raise his gun but he can't move – he's paralyzed in its stare. "Sam!" he hisses. The creature, amazingly, hasn't moved, but Dean can imagine a dog raising its hackles and baring its teeth.

Sam manages to get a shot off, and the dog flinches but its eyes vanish, and Dean hears the skitter of paws throwing up rocks on the path as it flees. Suddenly Dean can move again.

"What the hell was that?" he asks.

"I think I might know, actually." But Sam doesn't have time to explain, because they're running after it.  
If its gaze alone paralyzes Dean, he doesn't worry about lighting it up with his flashlight. He figures if they can see it but it can't see them, they at least might have a better chance to aim.

They make it down the hill and have entered the crevasses below. Here it's even darker – not even the ambient light of the sky or stars can reach, but they've got their chance if they can back the animal up against one of the stone walls.

A gust comes up the crevasse, and Dean is nearly bowled over by the reek of the animal. It's like sulphur and piss, and he coughs reflexively.

The rattle sounds again. Suddenly the animal stops and turns, and the yellow circle of Dean's flashlight falls over it. "Don't look!" he shouts for Sam's benefit, because it's too late for him. He's frozen in the creature's gaze again.

In a flash he can see that what seemed from a distance to be a small curly-haired black dog is, after midnight, a shriveled nearly-hairless mangy wild thing. Its skin shines underneath its bare bristles like a pig's skin, and as it rattles its death rattle and raises its hackles, its shadow rears up behind it like a part of the creature, and suddenly the rocks are menacing them too, a wave of pure darkness overcoming any light from the sky.

Dean sees all this and is unable to move since he's caught the thing's eye, and he tries to hold it, hopes desperately that somehow Sam has managed to hold onto a scrap of luck and not look at it, or somehow shoot without looking. But before Sam can shoot, the creature runs again, and so they have to give chase.

They're a few yards from the bottom of the slope, where the forest begins, when Dean completely bites it. He trips and falls headlong, and at the speed he's going he has no time to fall smart, so he lands hard on his wrist. A jolt of searing pain shoots through it, and he yells.

He hears Sam skid to a stop near him, and then Sam hauls him up.

"Did you see it?" Dean asks, gasping.

"No," Sam says. "It stopped. Dean, if you aim me and I shoot it –"

"Yeah." Sam's holding his rifle up to his shoulder now, ready to fire. "Close your eyes." Dean turns his flashlight on the glisten of the black dog's oily skin – that's how close they are - and catches it like a deer in headlights, standing there, rattling. 

The thing has stopped. It's isn't running now, stopped before the trees as though guarding something there, or suddenly caught between two dangers. 

Dean doesn't look at its eyes but at its paws. Fast as he can he nudges Sam into the right position, sights it as best he can for the angle they're at, and says "Now!"

Sam shoots, the spray of iron pellets hit the thing and it yelps soundlessly, falling to the ground.

"Guess point-blank is close enough that my bad luck didn't screw it up," Dean says, going over to look at the thing. It's like the most disgusting wild cur he's ever imagined, the evil stench pouring off it. Like a chupacabra, almost, but bigger and more dog-like. Digusting.

A jolt of pain goes through Dean's wrist and travels up his arm, and he hisses, gingerly holding it with his other hand. He tries to gauge if it hurts less held vertical or horizontal.

Sam says, "What happened?"

"My wrist," Dean says. "Probably just sprained." He winces.

Sam goes over and helps him up. Dean holds his wrist close to his stomach,

"Maybe a tiny fracture," he admits, and he's self-conscious of the pain in his voice. Not like this doesn't happen to them all the time but he did just recently spend a few days trying to convince Sam he'd be fine doing this case on his own, so Sam could stay with Sarah a little longer. Obviously Dean would not have been fine by himself on this one.

"We can get you to a hospital,"

"Aw, man, no," Dean says. "Just give me some painkillers and we'll wrap it up. I'll see in the morning."

"If that black dog curse isn't permanent. That only counts as twice, right? Bad luck, not a death curse?"

"The thing's dead, it can't hold any power over us. I think."

"Maybe we should go see Missouri and get you checked out just to be sure."

"Dude, she hates me. Nah, I got my misfortune out of the way, right? And you're safe."

-

Sam wraps Dean's wrist out of the supplies in their trunk, a quick splint and ace bandage. Dean pops about four Advil and counts on that and his adrenaline to get him through the night. 

The pain pills kick in but his adrenaline is still there when they get back to the motel room, though, so he waits for the cliff to drop off. Sam's washing up while Dean didn't even want to bother enough to do that, is just lying on his back still half-dressed with his wrist resting on his stomach.

"What a trip," Sam says through a mouthful of toothpaste, and Dean hums agreement, eyes closed. "Just a few hours ago we were the luckiest guys alive. We've still got a few hundred bucks in our wallets. Maybe that'll be enough to get you a cast if you broke that wrist."

Dean groans. "You're such a downer. Just go to bed, I'm not gonna need a cast."

"You sure you don't want me to stay up with you?" Sam's doing it on purpose now, Dean can hear the sly tease in his voice.

"You're lucky I don't have anything to throw at you, brat."

Sam turns out the light shortly, but Dean's still lying there, his wrist sore but without any serious sharp pain. He can't move around much, but he starts jiggling his foot and can hear the rustle of the starchy, scratchy sheets.

He can tell by Sam's breathing that Sam isn't asleep either. Dean's trying to think of something to bring up, an excuse to talk to Sam in the dark instead of just sitting in his head. Then he hears the rhythmic rustle of sheets, the familiar sound of Sam touching himself. Dean holds his breath, not saying anything. Goddamn it, Sam has to know Dean isn't asleep. They've both been restless and shifting on the scratchy sheets. If Dean knows what Sam sounds like when he's sleeping, then can't Sam know the difference between Dean's waking breathing and his asleep breathing? Doesn't he by now?

He must.

Dean doesn't want to think about why, about any of this, how Sam's being grossly inconsiderate, how Dean shouldn't be trying to listen. But the sounds Sam's making, quicker breathing, little movements that have Dean straining for the rasp of skin on skin, not just sheets – those little noises have him hooked. Any other night he's been able to sleep through this or ignore it, but not tonight.

Finally he has to say something, to scratch the itch or stop Sam or bug him, anything now.

"That got you goin', huh? A little post-hunt adrenaline, and you're gonna whack off without even waiting for me to fall asleep?"

"Ah, shit," Sam says, and he sounds a little choked. Like he was really getting into it, before Dean interrupted. "Sorry." 

"Oh, go on, don't start worrying about me hearing you _now_ ," Dean says. He's trying to layer on the sarcasm to cover how Sam's not the only one a little riled up tonight. Dean doesn't actually want Sam to _stop_. "You're gonna have to pay up – share a little – if I'm stuck here listening to this. Can't even jack off with this wrist, come on, man."

Sam's holding his breath, so Dean ventures forth some bait.

"Tell me about Sarah, huh?"

Sam takes a deep breath. "What do you want to know?"

"Give me the penthouse letters. I could tell she wanted to jump your bones, man, not just sit around and watch Battlestar Gallactica. She a wildcat? She like it on top? Adventurous? How hard did you nut when you first –"

"Oh my god, Dean."

"Gotta spill, Sam!" Dean chuckles at his double entendre.

"Hard, okay? Jesus." Sam sounds flustered, the prude. "Maybe we did just watch Battlestar Gallactica."

"Mmm, Starbuck."

Sam coughs. "Uh, yeah. We had a lot of sex. She was really… experienced."

"Could you be more clinical?"

"Her parents were out for the weekend, so we had the run of her place. We cooked dinner, or she did, and then she wanted me to, uh, eat her out while she sat on the counter. So I did. And then she wanted me to carry her over to the dining table, which was huge –"

"Damn, Sammy! You just do everything she told you?"

"Mm. Yeah, basically. We did it on the dining room table, like, I sat her on the edge, and – and then she laid back – we knocked shit off, I think a sugarbowl broke." Sam gulps. "She came loud."

"You come?"

"Yeah?" Sam's voice is a bit of a squeak. "And then again half an hour later."

Dean's finding it really hard not to touch himself to this. "You ever get that blowjob, Sammy?"

Sam's breath catches – Dean can hear the little vocalization in his throat, and shit, that's hot. To think that Dean can get that from him. "Yeah, yeah I did," he says, and Dean wonders if he's maybe pushing too far – too close for comfort. Maybe he shouldn't go on. He promised himself not to fuck with Sam again, not to fuck him up, not to pull that on him. It's not supposed to be about _them_ and sex.

Even so, Dean feels a burn in his stomach, envy and delight, glad to hear Sam had _some_ fun he can look back on in laughter even now. Still the envy – he might be angry when Sam keeps the dark stuff from him, but he feels jealous of the happiness too, that there are moments of Sam's joy that he missed in his little brother's life. That burn in his stomach is greed, he knows it.

Sam turns again in bed, throwing the sheets around.

Then, because Dean is a little shit who wants to pry every one of Sam's confidences, he asks, "She slip you a finger while she was blowing you?"

He hears Sam's sharp intake of breath.

 _What, you're scandalized?_ Dean thinks, a little bit mocking, but he admits Sam's gasp fuels the heat in his gut. As long as Sam doesn't know, he can take his secret pleasure in Sam's reactions. He's learned to cultivate this: the fun of flirting with someone you know you can't have, when you've come to accept it. He and Sam have everything else, are close in every other way. 

"Huh? N-no," Sam says, and it's the stutter, the distracted sound of Sam's voice that brings Dean out of his own head to notice the sound of _skin_ , rubbing against skin. Dean realizes Sam's touching himself again. "Tell me what it's like."

Lust hits him like a bolt to the gut.

It's not like Sam hasn't done this before – touched himself with Dean in the room, hell, he's done it plenty in this last year - but _God_ , while they're talking about Sam's sex life? Fuck.

No, really, _shit_.

Dean thought he knew, thought he knew something about how Sam was feeling messed up and dysfunctional after Jess. Thought Sam couldn't get it up, thought he was nervous, thought he was letting guilt over Jess get in the way of his fun.

Dean thinks to himself, _Say something, just say something, pretend you don't hear, or make fun of him, just say_ something! Like if he stays silent he's complicit in Sam's perversion.

Instead Sam asks first, "You ever do it? Give that blowjob?" He's breathing a bit heavier than normal.

Dean clams up.

It's suddenly very clear to him that he has to put a stop to this right now. If this is Sam's way of reminding Dean he tried to seduce him as a teenager… or, remembering how Sam grabbed him then and initiated that handjob by the fire, some new solicitation… Dean's not that guy. He's not gonna _be_ that guy and he's not gonna let Sam be it either. He fucking regrets kissing Sam and never stopped hoping Sam had somehow forgotten about it.

He may know what he feels and thinks and have come to accept that part of him will never be normal, that he's bound to be a freak. But Sam doesn't have to know that. And if he does, somehow, well. Dean's not going to give up the game.

"'Night, Sam," Dean says, abrupt. He rolls over to sleep on his stomach, with his splinted wrist resting next to the pillow. Bitter with the secret of his own half-arousal stifled against the mattress, Dean takes a while to fall asleep. He suspects it takes Sam a while too. He doesn't hear his brother moving any more that night.


	3. Part III

_  
"If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us." – Quentin Compson, William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury_

 

It's only been a week since the Devil's Gate, Dean takes the Doublemint Twins to their motel room that night and Sam sits in the car right outside the window. Dean doesn't care to close the blinds and he can see Sam, he knows he's out here with a front-seat view. Dean gives him a fucking thumbs-up, for crying out loud, when Sam looks up from reading about Faust. Apparently it's never a good idea to sell your soul for love. Who'd have known.

Dean will tell him later that he should lay off, and Sam will ask Dean how he can value his own life so little, that he'll lie back and accept his sentence.

Sam's an underhanded button-pusher, he knows that about himself. All he can hear is that he's a selfish little brother, selfish to ask Dean to kill him, selfish to die anyway, selfish now to be alive again.  
It's not true but it's far better than the devastating alternative – that he is powerless in this situation. He hopes that somehow he has control over this, some purposeful influence over Dean, because otherwise he can do nothing about Dean's need to annihilate himself for the sake of his little brother. Otherwise Dean's just suicidal.

Sam really hates both options.

Watching Dean live wild and free, picking up chicks and getting drunk off his ass, confusing hedonism and seizing the day with honest to god nihilistic and suicidal behavior – it's misery for Sam because Dean feels entitled to all of it. Sam blames him, he blames him so much, but he also can't blame him because he owes Dean everything now, there would be no Sam Winchester if it weren't for Dean.

Sam just wants every minute of Dean's last year but he can't stand being around this guy, who doesn't talk about the Grand Canyon or getting out of the life, who goes out on the town to drink it all up and plays his sentence to hell for laughs.

He wants Dean in a way that those twins don't really touch. Sam thinks, he has more right to Dean than that. Dean pushed him away, pushed him down. Dean sold his soul for him. Dean might have a thing about Sam, their sexual hang-ups might possibly be mutual, but Dean won't ever acknowledge it and in the end Dean will leave Sam alone in the world to protect him. Dean wants Sam to live so he can be a successful big brother, whatever that is.

Sam just wants the little time and partnership he can get.

-

When the crossroads demon laughs at him, and brings it up, Sam's frustration with what Dean's become in his last year, she taunts him. "Admit it. You'll be happy without sloppy, needy, desperate Dean."

Her words stick in him and tear like barbs. She's wrong. That's exactly what Sam wants. He wants Dean to let go, he wants Dean to cry on him, he wants Dean to cling to Sam while he's grasping desperately to the last year of his life.

But maybe Sam has no right. Sam already pushed Dean away all those years ago. He's the one who left, and continued to hold Dean at arm's length during those years.

Sam looks across the car at Dean, who's humming along with Mick Jagger and keeping his eyes on the dark road.

Sam wants to box him up and keep him here, keep him who he used to be, where they used to be. Where an infinite indefinite longing was just like the road before and behind them: never shifting, just a constant with old and new ground they were certain they'd tread till they died young or faded away. But they'd be together. It was supposed to be together.

Now, there's an end point. So many things they have to resolve or be left forever unsaid. Sam has a hard time dealing with that. He's always wanted closure, or at least for things to end on his terms, which is like closure.

Sam's always worked best as a man with a plan, but now all he can do is search desperately for loopholes in Dean's contract while Dean works against him. Sam can see no resolution, no way this is going to turn out all right. No way they aren't rushing downhill towards each other to head each other off on the way to damnation. No way they can do anything to make this year not end horribly.

-

Sam's thinking about it, sitting like a shmuck at a table while the night-life is picking up around them. Dean's at the bar, a few more drinks in than Sam who's resigned himself to being designated driver tonight. He doesn't want to drink too much and get any more morose than this. He's still shaken and nursing his wounds from the confrontation with the crossroads demon he shot.

"Hey Sam," Dean says, sliding into the chair across from Sam to lean forward conspiratorially. "Lydia and her friend know where we can hear the Metallica concert, if we park up on this hill." Dean glances back at the girls at the bar, a brunette with blonde streaks and a bottle-blonde, who's maybe even a year or two younger than Sam. He wonders which one's Lydia, figures it depends on whether Dean's leaning towards blondes or brunettes tonight.

"Okay," Sam says, turning the page in his book on North American demonology.

"Well don't you want to?" Dean's looking at him a little impatiently. "Come on, I know you're determined to suffer, but we had a good hunt last night, so take a break."

"I'm just not in the mood to hang out with a couple of twenty-one-year-olds."

"Dude, they're twenty-four."

"Great. Go hang out with them if you want to."

"God, you're such a buzzkill, you make a man feel bad for spending a little quality time –"

Sam interrupts, "Quality time, really? This is what you want to do? You can do whatever you want. Go ahead, hook up with those girls, I'll meet you back at the hotel."

Dean looks suddenly confused, and hurt. "Sam, are you sure you're -"

"Look, it's your year, right? You've got carte blanche. You can do anything you want except let me weasel you out of it."

"Now hold on, that's not –"

"Not fair?" Sam's voice cracks. "Not true? Not right? What, Dean?"

"I don't need your permission to do shit."

"Course not. Just like the deal you made for me."

"I swear to god, Sam –"

"No, I know, I have no right to complain -"

"Shut the fuck up."

"I _know_." Sam's fist hits the table. He's breathing hard, staring somewhere to the left of his brother's face and pointedly not at him. "I don't have the right to, Dean. Don't have the right to ask for anything. Wish I hadn't." Sam's sure he's not making sense but that doesn't matter right now. He's feeling pretty dejected.

Dean looks confused for a bit till some clarity breaks on his face. He looks reluctant, uneasy.

"It's not your fault," Dean says, like he's automated.

"Don't tell me that." Sam is still breathing hard.

"You've had too much to drink. You don't know what you're talking about."

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Really?" Dean says, angrier now, visibly struggling to hold onto the edge of calm. "What do you want, Sam?"

Sam looks at him. 

"You can do anything," Sam says.

"No," Dean says. "No, I can't. I can't just do anything."

"Yeah, you can. You're already damned." Dean winces. "Whaddaya got left to lose?"

Dean leans back. "Plenty."

Sam's mouth gapes like a stupid fish.

Dean stands up, and in a flash he, Lydia, and Lydia's friend are out the door.

-

Sam's been collecting signs. He's been staying up all night when Dean's been out, been working hard to hide some of the stuff he's investigating because it's to get Dean out of the deal that Dean doesn't want Sam poking at. The selfish asshole.

He's collected reports of animals going feral, whole towns with a rash of mayhem and missing persons – not as many dead as missing. A sort of mass madness that everyone denies but in some places they say it's like a tornado blew through. There are pictures of paths of destruction, and though police reports say it's kids driving their off-roaders into the woods and people jeeping off the trails there are no tire tracks, just massive crushing of underbrush, and dozens of animal tracks from every local wild thing and then some. A stampede.

The hounds of hell, by some accounts, chase the souls of the damned through the sky forever. If he can find the Hunter that drives this Hunt, maybe he can buy or bargain an exemption for Dean.

Sam's close to having enough to justify it as a hunt. In the meantime he's found cases and nudges them closer and closer to the trajectory of things, which is traveling south through the Rockies, heading towards western Colorado.

-

They're hunting nixies in the forest behind some poor family's back yard in Southern California. The kid is safe, and it's no worse than a particularly tricky exterminating job now – until Sam gets tangled up in a mushroom ring.

Dean has to burn it down, which takes a while even with a flame torch, since mushrooms are full of water. By the time Dean manages it, Sam's sick.

"Are you sure it's not just the fumes?" Dean asks as they drive back. His own eyes are red and watery.

"Pretty sure," Sam groans weakly. He feels dizzy and vaguely alienated from his body. He looks at his hands and moves his fingers, trying to connect intent with sensation.

"You should sleep."

"Or throw up."

"Whoa, whoa." Dean pulls over a few times on the way back to the motel but Sam is only sick once.  
Sam gets to sleep for eight hours in the motel room while Dean goes back to make sure it's all taken care of, and when he wakes up he feels fine. Full of strange dreams he can't remember, but all in all, it didn't turn out too bad. 

They're driving down the highway, in a stretch of hot Arizona desert halfway to Albuquerque. Sam's dozing off in the passenger seat to Ozzy Osbourne.

He's chasing something, running desperately through a forest. There's some desperation in his mind that hasn't taken shape yet – is this a hunt? Is he looking for Dean? Are they in danger?

But then he sees Dean running beside him, passing him up, so Sam puts an extra burst of speed, and they break out of the dark woods onto the top of a hill covered in golden long prairie grass. They run down it, and the grasses grow taller and taller, till they're taller than their heads. Sam is trying to catch Dean, grab his shoulder, his wrist, some part of him. Dean grins back at him bright and golden like this is a game, and Sam sure hopes so, but he knows its urgent he get a hand on Dean, that he not lose him in this grass.  
Finally he tackles Dean, and they roll to the ground, flattening the grass thick underneath them. Sam's trying to pin Dean down and make him stay in one place, but Dean rolls them so he's on top of Sam. He grabs Sam's hands, has them in a grip crushed between their chests that Sam can't break loose, and then he puts his mouth on Sam's and kisses him.

Sam kisses back with no hesitation or reservation. Like this is a one-time-only deal. Then Dean reaches down and cups Sam's dick through his jeans, then he takes Sam's jeans off and strokes him, strokes and strokes. 

Sam's staring down at Dean's hand wrapped around both their dicks and he wants so badly to come, he feels like he could come, but Dean's hand is still tight around him, trapping him. He looks at Sam so intently and intentionally and lustfully like he _wants_ Sam like this, naked and spread out, and Sam is suddenly sure that they're going to do this, and Dean starts to move down his body, mouth open, and Sam's sure he's going to put his mouth on Sam's cock, and -

"Sam!" Dean says, and a hand lands hard on Sam's shoulder, fingers pushing against his neck, waking him up.

Sam half opens his eyes, which feel like lead, and by instinct presses his hands to his lap where they rested on Dean's shoulders in the dream – what? shit. Sam can feel that he's completely hard. He presses his crotch harder without thinking and it makes him whimper with almost-pain.

Dean swears, "What the hell?" and Sam moans because he feels like he's on fire. "Shit," Dean hisses, and Sam echoes, " _Shit._ " as he comes.

His whole body shivers with it, and he can feel the wetness of his jizz spreading, his dick still hard but softening. He pants, and Dean twitches the wheel as if he's ready to pull them over. It all happened so fast he hasn't had time to adjust his driving.

"What the hell, Sam??"

"I don't know! I – fucking nixies, that mushroom circle did something to me." Sam flushes red and Dean's looking quick at him and away. "Can you pull over?" He asks, and Dean sighs, as if he was just waiting for permission, and stops on the shoulder so fast Sam nearly gets whiplash.

Dean gets out of the car first, Sam still weak-legged. It's definitely that mushroom circle. Dreaming about Dean that way… that's nothing new. But he never comes like a fourteen-year-old in his sleep.

When Sam opens the door, going to beeline for the trunk and his bag, find a dirty shirt to wipe up with, Dean bursts out with "What the hell is wrong with you?'

"Me? I didn't fucking mean to!"

"But it still fucking happens! All the time you're–" Dean waves his hand, not looking at Sam, and then just covers his eyes.

"All the time? What?" He doesn't _all the time_. Maybe he used to _all the time_. Sam's feeling wet and ashamed and confused as hell, brain not entirely awake yet, and yet still Dean is the one making this all about him.

"You drive me fucking crazy," Dean says, pressing the heels of his palm against his eyes, and Sam thinks about how he does that till he sees spots, leaving an imprint on his vision so he doesn't have to look at shit. Apparently Sam needs to let Dean have this moment.

And yet, shit, he can see Dean's lips as his brother wipes a hand down his face, horribly dear to him and precious now that Dean's a scarce resource. Sam's going to run out of Dean in less than a year.

" _I_ drive you crazy?" Sam says.

"I swear to god, it's like you have an instinct for the worst timing." Dean's been looking away the whole time, opening the trunk with his keys, and finally looks at Sam as he says, "Clean yourself up." Sam sees his eyes flicker, thinks _Dean looks afraid_. Not a look he sees in the broad glaring daylight sun much, but there it is.

Sam stands there and entertains the possibility that Dean's just as affected by this as Sam is.

Sam remembers shit, all right? He obsesses over small details because that's how his brain works. He clings to little things and wants to work them out, wants Dean to talk about stuff that Dean doesn't think is a big deal, but Sam wants to unravel every knot in the world, and keeps things tucked away to use to his advantage later.

He doesn't know how it's to his advantage to remember that the other time Dean looked at him afraid while Sam had a hand on himself – six years ago, when they were messing around and maybe Dean was in a little over his head. Sam doesn't know what right now has in common with six years ago for Dean, except the world is ending for them again, they're careening towards a cliff and when they reach it, poof, that's the end, God knows if they'll ever have each other again. But Sam doesn't see a way out this time.

Maybe that's a lot in common, though. Maybe this time Dean is running and Sam is the one who would go to extreme measures to hold on to him.

-

That night as Dean sleeps one motel bed over, Sam decides he doesn't want to let this thing go. His brain is digging into Dean in every way, desperate not to let a moment go unseized by memory. He might as well do the same, get everything out there, resolved, right?

He tries not to think of it as making peace with the dead.

The thing is, Dean's already pushed him away. They've already gone so long abiding by the status quo, unwilling to speak or to act, as if they're really okay with the state of things unresolved as they are.

Sam knows what he wants but he's not going to manipulate a dying man. But he really fucking wants to ask Dean, so he's pushes boundaries, looks long and remorselessly, only takes what time alone he needs for research and sleep. He's sure Dean knows it, has seen Sam at it, maybe even recognizes what Sam's after. He wants to be horribly close, to do things they'd never dare before, when they weren't dead men walking.

Sam thinks about how Dean's been thinking about his little brother secretly, the sort of dwelling that would make Dean snap like he did on the side of the road that day. Sam shivers. Dean thinking about him, not even just the forbidden incestuous thoughts, but the caring ones too, the little looks and touches, the taking care he does of Sam.

Sam thinks about how two years ago he slid so easily into wanting to cover Dean's body with his, to rub against him. And before that, when Dean kissed him, when Dean touched him at night by the lake and watched him all those weeks. It makes Sam's gut knot tight and hot with purpose, lustfully wanting to paint all their lives with that brush, make it a teleological progression. He wants to convince Dean who he suspects has already told himself the same, the worst: you were reading me that book at bedtime all for this. You told me that story so that one day, this. When you bought me that backpack, when you stole my shoelaces, when you waited for me after school it was all so that one day you would fuck me. So that we would end up like this.

Sam feels hot all over, electric right through.

Sam feels very _be all you can be_ about this. He's determined to open that forbidden door. It's like hallways between rooms, it's like windows opening in his eyes and the light here is Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean's shining like he always shines. Dean in the campfire. Dean in the grave fire. Dean in the house fire. Dean in all the fires down to the fires of hell.

It's terrible. It's terrible and Sam will be right there with him if it is the last thing he does. If it is the last thing whatever Sam turns into does.

  
-  
-  
-  


_"and Father said That's sad too people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you.”  
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury_

 

Dean's overly aware of the sound of their footsteps as they walk across the cemetery. They're finishing up a salt and burn, walking back through acres of crackling dry grass by the white prairie church. Lucky it's a no-moon night, Dean wants to say, but they've got to be dead silent. The darkest night is the best kind of night for digging up graves. This farm town goes to bed early - in fact, Sam and Dean are breaking curfew by being out - but even the police can sleep at night in a town like this.

Dean's following the lightest patch on Sam tonight, the flash of the collar of his shirt, the faded back of his gravedigging jeans. Watching the movement of his brother's legs makes Dean think, _it's been ages since Sam got laid._ The last girl he really liked was Madison. Poor girl. At this rate, Sam's been lonely for too long, so maybe Dean should start bumping him into girls in bars again.

He feels a little nauseated about it. Not the thought of Sam spending a little time on his own these days – they're claustrophobic as hell, or at least Dean is, with his approaching end like a moving wall coming to trash-compact him. The obsessive way Sam watches him now increases the pressure, making Dean anxious that his brother's gonna cry at any minute or say something horribly embarrassing, something that'll make Dean want to sink into the ground and hide away.

It's not sentiment he's afraid of, though, or of Sam getting a girl – that'd be a relief, someone for Sam to have once Dean is gone. Really Dean is afraid of anything that would break them up and wreck this partnership, the good thing they've got going now. He traded his soul to preserve these days in and out with Sam. He wants to protect how they've grown close in a good way and not the self-loathing fearful shadow-of-their-father way. Not the way Sam was back when they were fucking around and the whole while Sam was secretly planning to leave for Stanford. Not back when Dean had all the wrong sick ideas of how you keep family near and with you.

Dean thinks about it, trying to fall asleep after Sam's already dropped off. He's been having a hard time sleeping this week, but he's given up on going out. He's getting tired of the bars and girls where he never sees anyone twice but everything's the fucking same night after night, no matter the town. So Sam goes to bed and Dean tries to, but tonight he's lying awake listening to the sound of the plains winds coming down off the mountain, whistling under the crack of the motel room window, buffeting the side of the building.

Shifting restlessly, he thinks, _I shouldn't be sticking around him so much. Give him space, not make us sick._ But he's got no real plans or desire to leave and give Sam space, despite his fear that Sam will drive himself nuts over Dean's deal, will try to grab on too close, ask Dean for something he just can't give. 

Sam tried, once. They were in that haunted hotel in Connecticut months ago, and Sam asked Dean to kill him if he ever went darkside. If Sam had been sober it would've been easier for Dean to say no to him. If he hadn't been physically clinging to Dean, Dean could have put him off easier. Instead Sam let it seep through, whatever messed up part of him that thought this was what Dean wanted, whatever messed up part of him wanted Dean's touch in kind.

Sam must have noticed Dean's eyes on his hands, his mouth. Maybe he saw something – maybe it was Dean's mistake, that he somehow let Sam think… Dean knows he isn't subtle about how he feels, what he wants, but he's not telling anyone, especially Sam.

The only thing that saved Dean from giving in to Sam's unspoken plea for sick comfort was, and is, the shame of wanting to touch Sam like that already, for so long. It's pride and self-punishment that saves him. He's built up too much self-loathing resistance to give in at the first chance Sam offered. He's sick but he's not weak. So he said it, he promised Sam everything but the last rung, this last thing, so as not to seem weak in desire, so as to appear to have learned from only a momentary past mistake, to appear in control. To be delivered from temptation, to be not led into evil.

But they follow in evil's tracks every day.

Hunting's the thing that damns him and the thing that redeems him; taking care of Sam is gonna be the same way. Dean's angry that he can recall the feel of Sam's hands on his face even now.

After all that, after how long and hard Dean refused to follow through on the promise of that night, he's fairly certain he's shoved Sam off hard enough that he won't pull the same stunt and offer himself to Dean again. Dean wouldn't want him to. Dean's a sicko who may still want to touch his brother, may be Humbert Humbert for the rest of his short life, but he knows well enough to know that Sam is just fucking with him. Sam couldn't want that, and if he does, it's Dean's fault. And Dean's not going to fuck his brother and then leave him alone and even more messed up in the world.

Anyway, even if Sam is being sincere and not just trying to pity-fuck Dean to get even for Dean bringing him back to life, to feel like he's somehow given Dean what he wants and even the score – fuck that, fuck that, fuck that.

Dean's fist pounds the mattress. Sam shifts in his sleep but stays asleep.

Dean wants his brother, all right. He wants things to be the way they have been. He wants to remember the good times and have more of them. He doesn't want this to change, he doesn't want it to get weird or for any acknowledgement of desire to put even further strain on their relationship.

If he can have one thing guaranteed, it's for Sam to be his brother, there till the end.

-

Dean wakes up a few hours later to the sound of the wind. At least, he thinks that, but as his head clears it's more – it's a thundering, a moan.

He gets up to see. Sam is still asleep, a dark lump in the mostly-blacked-out hotel room. Dean walks across to the crack of faint light at the curtain and looks out. The moon is nearly full, illuminating the plains and the foothills before him. The road they're by goes right out of town and onward into a gap in the hills, rising up around where the river has carved a bed. These hills are currently funneling a steaming, dark mass of cattle, flowing like a dark river of molasses. Above them, the distant hills are covered in blinking red lights that he knows are windmills, but there's a cloudy mist coming down from the mountains, blowing through town just above the dew point, making the lights glow red and the darkness swirl. The lowing of cattle blends with the moan of the wind and the rumble of hooves on the earth, the tips of horns rising into view now and then above the sea of steaming cattle bodies covering and uncovering the red windmill lights, which swim like eyes. In the wind's whistle and whine he imagines he can hear the crack and groan of leather, the whine of horses and lowing of beasts.

It passes before him like a mirage, like a host of spirits. It takes many long minutes to pass from his sight up into the canyon road and out of view, but Dean watches the whole time, and when the red windmill lights look just like lights again and the plains are empty, he lies down and goes back to sleep.

-

Sam says he's got charts of ley lines, triangulations of reports of strange noises and animals going feral, and says tomorrow night they'll have to hike out to the woods and camp so he can follow the wind direction.

"Are you shitting me?' asks Dean, looking at the spread of charts Sam's got scattered over their motel room table.

"Fraid not." Sam tries gathering up the papers into a pile. "What, you like Colorado, don't you?"

"I like the food in Denver. That's not the same."

"I found us an old cabin to squat in, s'better than camping."

Dean shakes his head but all it means is that he's sure as shit impressed with the load of Sam's work. Dean's had a hard time concentrating lately. He wants to say it's the altitude, since they've been in New Mexico for not long enough yet, at least a mile up from the plains they were in last week, and he's feeling under the weather. But Sam's doing fine.

Honestly, after seeing what hellhounds can do, reports of unearthly packs of dogs or wolves creep him the fuck out. 

"Man, I don't wanna hunt no black dog," Dean twangs in complaint, shouldering their gear as they pack up this motel room to head out. "Remember last time, when I broke my wrist going after it?"

"Boo hoo. I broke my wrist going after a zombie, I don't turn those hunts down."

"You would if you could."

"Yeah, probably," Sam says, but he's clearly distracted and not listening to Dean.

-

All the locals at the bar seem antsy. A couple starts fighting, and it takes a few people to separate them, but the way the barkeep looks at them they're regulars and it's not a surprise to see them fighting. Still, everyone's on edge, and the heat of the day hasn't yet blown out in the high-altitude nighttime breeze.

Sam looks askance at the couple, but Dean's not worried. They cops aren't going to catch up to them out here, in this middle-of-the-wilderness outpost. Besides, it's the only bar in town.

Dean wants to stay and trounce at pool, but Sam's looking a little caged.

Dean looks at the crowd again and maybe he's seeing what Sam's seeing now, the tension an undercurrent of panic. Every laugh is a little manic, every man wide-eyed and salivating, every woman toothed.

Sam is the only thing he can look at and trust, Sam who he wants to grab by the collar and hang on, Sam who the only sure, good thing in this smoky seedy bar full of strangers.

Dean's reaction to the thrumming undercurrent of wildness isn't fear but excitement. He is a hunter, after all, both joyful and impatient here.

Sam finally catches his gaze and Dean sees the tension break there, relief and a smile that Dean returns to show that he gets it, he gets how crazy Sam feels right now.

Dean yells over the noise, "You wanna get going?"

Sam leans off away from the wall he was leaning against and in towards Dean. His low voice reaches Dean's ears soft and strong and deep. "Yeah."

"Let's go for a drive," Dean says, and Sam lights up like that's the best thing he's heard all day.

Dean drives, of course. They roll the windows down and Sam sticks his head out, wind whipping his hair.

"You're like a dog," Dean shouts over the blast of noise, and Sam laughs. Dean guns it.

They drive out and up and up till they reach a vista point, a lookout where it's clear a bunch of people have parked their cars to make out or fuck or whatever the kids do these days. Dean and Sam laugh and Dean looks at Sam. Maybe that was his mistake.

"We could head up into the mountains now," Dean says. "Pull off, go into the woods. See how far we get."

Sam's looking eager, but then he shakes his head vigorously like a dog. "Let's just keep driving for a bit more. Our stuff's back in that abandoned cabin."

"All right," Dean says, easy and agreeable to whatever direction motion will take them. He peels out of the roadside stop and back onto the road, up a steep incline, then a series of switchback turns that creak the Impala's frame.

Dean plays the steering wheel like a drum before grabbing it with one hand to navigate the sharpest turns. Yellow 15 MPH – 10 MPH warning signs zoom by in the headlights and head right for Sam's face before the car takes each turn. Sam whoops and grips the door tight.

"Wanna go shoot something," Dean shouts.

Sam pulls his head back in, breathless. "All right."

They end up shooting cans under the stars, crowing and taunting each other, moonlit grins visible in the night. They empty their handguns of bullets, except Sam still has one left, and Dean tries to grab for it recklessly. But Sam just stands there, holds it high, far away, not running or leaning away but towards Dean, looking down at him close. Dean can feel his breath, can smell his brother and they don't smell like the bar anymore, Sam smells like cedar and newly-washed flannel shirt and Dean feels a little gross in comparison, a little jealous, a little strange to be climbing his brother for the last bullet.

Dean feels frozen there while Sam just looks at him, eyes smiling and sad like he's waiting, and when Dean realizes he's _looking_ back, he leans away and says, "All right, 's getting late enough."

They drive a loop back to town, engine thrumming like a lullaby under the dark and starry skies.

"Bar sucked," Sam says, sleepy drunk. Dean probably is too but somehow they don't care. "'S go sleep."

"Whatever you say, Sammy"

They go back to the abandoned cabin and Sam conks out on top of a musty foam cot pad.  
Dean, who is drunk and restless and wants to get even with Sam, pulls out his dick. It's dark as pitch in here except for the glow of their phones. They might as well sleep the next day away, since they're starting their nature hike tomorrow night.

Though this isn't exactly vengeance because Sam is asleep, not awake to hear it and understand Dean's torment of witnessing his little brother jack off, Dean is a little frustrated after the last couple weeks – that goddamn fairy circle especially. He's eager to work off some of his own tension.

He jerks himself hard because he's turned on, unbelievably turned on. He doesn't know what the fuck it is, this wild thing going around town that's got him too now. Sure, it's been a while, maybe he hasn't felt up to it. He hasn't had much luck hooking up with chicks for a while now because he's been having a hard time getting happy. So sue him.

But tonight is magic and tonight he had a good time with Sam and he doesn't feel like himself anymore. The weight's been lifted off his shoulders in a way that doesn't happen anymore when he drinks. Drinking only weighs him down now, sinking these thoughts in him.

This isn't drunkenness, this is… euphoria.

Dean jerks off and thinks of Sam in the car a week ago, coming spontaneously in his jeans in this teenage way that should have just been disgusting and not disgustingly hot but he wanted to watch it. He got to see the look on Sam's face, exquisite pleasure - to see Sam in pleasure like that, that was what Dean was selfish for.

Dean let Sam's name slip from his lips and he thought it was quiet, but after he comes, once he stops moving, he hears Sam shifting in the next bed and dread stirs in him. Sam just says "Fuck you, Dean," quiet, and then goes to sit outside on the porch.

Dean feels like shit.

-

They hike into the mountains the next night. It's a pain in the ass, and Dean doesn't want to camp, he wants to get in and get out.

When he grumbles, Sam says, "I don't like it either, you know. I'd stay in the house if we could, but we might have to go even further in than we can make it today. Whatever we're looking for could have its lair deeper in the woods."

Dean bottles up his complaining. It's not worth it. He can remind himself he's a professional, doesn't need Sam to do it.

It's too dry to even think of a fire for when they camp. They brought a couple deli sandwiches, and when they get far enough in they eat, then set up the tent by the light of the full moon and their flashlight.

The tent they have is a two-man, which is not like most two-man tents in that it fits both of their over-six-foot bodies. In fact it might be more of a three man, but that doesn't mean Dean andSam aren't basically shoulder to shoulder. Sam won't sleep with his head near Dean's feet, he says it's gross, and anyway Dean would rather not be kicked in the face if Sam starts sleeping restless again.

It's too dark to do anything so Sam checks his charts again, checks the direction of the wind (it's still, Dean thinks to himself, but whatever). They salt a line in front of the door flap to finish and turn in.  
The moon shining through the sparse high-altitude trees makes a bright pattern on their tent walls and roof. Maybe tonight wasn't the best night for a hunt. The full moon electrifies Dean, keeps him not on the edge of sleep but almost more awake than he was while the sun was still up. The coolness of the outdoor breeze and the slip of air coming in through the not-entirely closed zipper is alluring; the sluggish heat of the day held in the ground is still rolling off. Dean finds himself impatient for the cool air.

The animal noises on their way into the woods were loud and frequent, but now there's only silence, punctuated by the occasional flutter of bird wings. It's not normal for the woods at night to be that silent. The silence feels tense and creepy, the temperature change affecting them Dean supposes, and the moon too, bizarrely bright and energizing to be under, almost like daytime. He would expect even more animal activity under a full moon than on a regular night.

"Like werewolves?" asks Sam when Dean says this out loud.

"Or anything, not just monsters. Isn't that an animal thing?"

Sam makes a skeptical humming noise. 

"I just think it's weirdly quiet."

"Too quiet?"

It's Dean's turn to make a skeptical noise. "Just weird, that it would happen suddenly. When…"

He hears Sam rustle on his bedroll next to him. Dean turns his face and he can see Sam's silhouette turn to face him. Sam's gusting exhale blows over Dean's face. It smells like toothpaste. Figures Sam would bring his toothbrush with him into the woods.

"When what? 

"You feel it too? The effect it has?"

"If this is what everyone in town felt, the ones who snapped and fled for the wild…"

"Yeah," Dean says. "I could understand it."

"Like a call that resonates with people in a certain state. A siren, or a psychic dog whistle." Sam jiggles his leg, shifts his arm and Dean can feel it brush against him.

"So what do you think is in the woods, calling them? Or driving them there?" Dean asks, trying to distract himself.

"Uh, I don't know. I still think it's a spirit thing."

Thunder suddenly rolls in the sky, though they didn't see any flash of lightning. The moon's glow isn't as sharp but Dean can still see Sam's silhouette.

"Shit," Dean says. "I hope it doesn't rain."

"I hate digging trenches," says Sam.

"I hate the hard ground." Dean shifts his legs, rolls over onto his side, still restless. Apparently Sam is too, because they end up bumping each other knee to knee, feet kicking for space. Sam hip-checks Dean amidst the rolling and Dean keeps his arms braced for his own space.

"Pine needles not enough for you, princess?" he taunts.

Sam shoves.

"Cool it," says Dean, as he shoves back.

They tussle a bit, not just shoves but putting their whole bodies into it. It nearly turns into a wrestling match. Dean's face is hot, he feels hot all over. Sweaty, despite the cooling air out there. Must be the storm coming. The weird charge in the air that's been bugging him feels like it's settling into his skin and muscles.

"We sure we're not looking for some kind of ambient pollen? One that makes people wig out?" he says.

"What?" Sam says, and he sounds breathless.

"I dunno, some supernatural allergen that drives people crazy and out into the woods? I kinda feel…"

Sam's heavy breaths are reaching Dean's face in gusts, wet and human and comforting. Both of them have their bodies all tensed from their roughhousing and this sudden pause leaves them lying awkwardly. Dean's throat feels stuck.

"Yeah?" Sam says.

Dean coughs. "Nothing."

Sam huffs.

"Hey you got a problem there, mouth breather?"

Sam grunts. "Just –"

"Just what?"

"Nothing. Uh, nature calls."

A wolf howls faint in the distance and Dean chuckles. Then thunder rolls again and Sam hisses, "Shit."

"Maybe you better hold it."

Sam groans and Dean is aware once again of how close they are. Sam rolls over onto his stomach to bury his head in his arms, his face in the coat he's using as a pillow. Dean has a sudden surge of longing, of preemptively missing his little brother. He has a lot of moments like that, selfishly wanting Sam, as well as mournful ones of unselfishly wanting Sam to live and be happy.

Dean wants to swing a leg over his brother's hips, roll on top of his back, hold him down with his whole body and press. To very physically keep him here.

He thinks Sam has probably wanted to do the same.

Any other night his stomach would be tying itself in knots of shame and longing but he can't think tonight, and he's glad for it. Sam is so close, his tiny twitching falling-asleep movements.

Sam lets out a little whimper. Dean recognizes that sound.

Suddenly Dean gets it. Sam is trying to get off in right next to Dean, and maybe Dean's been so blind to _why_ Sam tries to touch him because he hasn't wanted to see it, he was so determined that Sam would never ask again. He thought he'd pushed Sam away far enough and long enough.

Dean had only been fooling himself.

Dean can feel Sam's hips shifting in little jerks and between the moonlight and whatever it is, he stops thinking, just puts his hand on Sam's lower back, presses down just over his tailbone where he can feel Sam's shirt end and his jeans begin.

Sam freezes, sucks in a breath. His leg muscles twitch. Dean doesn't move his hand, but keeps the pressure there, maybe presses down a little harder, then lets up, encouraging Sam not to stop. Sam starts moving again, maybe a little less subtly.

Heat pools in Dean's belly. His hand slips down a little to feel the curve of his brother's ass, which from watching he knows well but not necessarily by touch, not this way.

Dean wants to say something, or wants Sam to say something, because he doesn't want to just be sitting here in the dark touching his brother. They're both so messed up this year there's no telling if this would be just as bad or even worse than every other time they've crossed the boundary of normal touch.

But Dean can't think of anything to say now, in the silent hot night air, stuffed inside the tent. He's afraid that if he does anything to break the silence or Sam's rhythm of motion, one of them will stop, and suddenly know better.

"Sam," he says. His voice sounds strangely quiet to him, and he realizes his heart is beating hard and throbbing in his eardrums. He moves his hand up to Sam's lower back again and his fingertips curl under the edge of Sam's shirt, brushing skin. "Sam, are you –"

Sam moves quick under his hand, onto his side so he's facing Dean and Dean's hand is on his hip. Sam slides his own hand onto Dean's stomach and Dean shudders. The warring urges to push Sam away and pull him closer have Dean angry at himself again. But this feeling overrides anger.

He can't see Sam's face in the dark, but does he need to?

"Dean, please," Sam says, hooking a leg over one of Dean's to lie half on him. Dean can feel Sam's erection barely pressing into his hip.

Sam is still holding himself at some tense distance, waiting for something. An answer. _Yes_.

Dean moves to swing one leg over and in between Sam's, grabbing his brother's shoulder, aligning their chests and rolling them over so Dean's on top of him.

He palms Sam's neck and Sam moans, pants "Yeah, come on." He reaches down between them to palm Dean's dick and Dean makes an uncontrollable noise.

He isn't a noisy guy, not usually. But everything, his whole body, feels more electric tonight.

Pushed up against each other, they're humping like two teenagers frantic and face to face. Their whole bodies are aligned full length and close, like nothing they've done before. Dean's wanted it, though, god he's wanted it.

He feels closer to Sam than he's ever felt, the smell of Sam's tangy sweat in his nose. The way they push and pull against each other - it's horrible and impossible and Dean never thought in a million years they'd come to this: Sam in the dark, turning, putting his hand on Dean's face, the other clutching at his shoulder. Sam trying to drag Dean down, then rolling on top of him. Sam kissing his neck, making Dean gasp at the hot brand of it.

"That summer in the cabin by the lake – the summer before I left – " Sam breathes.

"Sam," says Dean, sounding miserable. "What I did to you…"

"No, fuck, don't say that -"

"Sam," Dean reaches out to do god knows what, but Sam catches his wrist.

"Please," Sam says, and kisses his mouth.

They rub off on each other, opening their jeans and yanking everything down just enough to get cocks out touching skin to skin. The heat there, the soft feeling of it – fuck. They roll around tangled in each other, the being close feeling just as good as the pressure on their dicks.

They make a mess of come on their bellies and slide their dicks through it, spreading it around, but Dean doesn't give a shit about mess. This tent in the woods is a no-man's land, just the nowhere space in utter darkness they need. The darkness Dean needs.

Dean crawls down Sam's body as he lies there. He wipes the slick of come with the bottom of Sam's shirt, then pushes it up Sam's belly, and feels the trail of pubic hair from his navel down to the thicket nestled around his dick.

Their come is still wet and sticky, matted in the thatch of hair at the base of Sam's dick. He feels the mess of it on his fingers and remembers the smell but it's so much more potent up close. Dean's hand brushes against Sam's softening cock as he pulls Sam's briefs further down. He honestly hasn't had the chance to do this, curious ages ago but in the end he never met a guy he really wanted to blow. Sam kinda took up all his blowjob fantasies after that summer long ago.

With a broad flat swipe of his tongue, he licks up Sam's shaft and surprises a whimper out of Sam. The sound goes straight to Dean's belly like a spark, like lightning.

Scrabbling with his hands, Sam finds the side of Dean's face. Dean turns into it without thinking. He opens his mouth for the head of Sam's half-hard dick and sucks it in, and Sam groans. 

Sam's hand on his cheek, and Dean sucks hard, letting the head of Sam's dick bulge under his cheek under Sam's hand. Sam gasps, "Fuck, Dean."

Dean dips and moves and feels Sam's dick move over his tongue hot and hard, feels Sam's thighs flex beneath his hands. He looks up and in the darkness and imagines he can see Sam's face, wrecked open-mouthed. Sam's soon hard again, like a champ, and after an unthinkable while that makes Dean's jaw ache Dean brings him off again with his mouth and his hand, licking up Sam's cock, laving his balls, the tacky feeling of drying come on his lips and chin and hands, the strong taste in his mouth contrasted with the saltiness of Sam's skin.

He uncurls his body and stretches out again, putting his head back by Sam's, and Sam hitches up his pants. Dean can't bring himself to kiss Sam after that, though he wants to. He can't overcome the thought of touching his mouth to Sam's dick and then his lips, feeling like his face smells too strongly of come, his mouth tastes too much like dick. His face feels hot.

Sam buries his face in Dean's shoulder and reaches down to Dean's crotch to press his open hand against the wet spot there, but Dean brushes Sam away. "Go to sleep," Dean says, and Sam must be tired because he just groans and rolls onto his back. He's asleep soon; Dean waits to hear Sam's breathing even out. Dean is half hard. He's wondering if he should have let Sam touch him, but the thought of it is too much, and the voice in his head says, _no way_. He wipes the semen out of his briefs with a hand and wipes that off on the edge of Sam's bedroll, then debates with himself whether he should jerk off just to relieve the pressure till he's too sleepy to anyway. 

He'd welcome oblivion now, before the shame sets in. He won't be prepared for tomorrow when it comes, but if never talking about this is what has to happen, then so be it.

-

Bellowing beasts, howls and screeches, lows and roars fill the air, punctuated by the squeak of leather and crack of a whip, chased by dogs barking and howling – the forest is filled with the sound of panic and fury. It's the shrieking birds and crashing brush that wake them up, the rumbling ground, and they scramble up and out of their tent quick.

A herd of deer is bounding through the clearing, their eyes big liquid black but in the dawn light sometimes shining red, red like their mouths. They send the tent flying after Sam and Dean leave it, grabbing their guns and hiding behind a tree.

The urge to run, run, run surges in them again when Dean hears an unearthly howl. He freezes. _Hellhounds_ is his first thought. They've come for him. 

He turns to Sam, certain fear is showing in his wide eyes. But Sam's eyes are wide too – "You hear howling?" he shouts over the crash of underbrush, and a cougar about five feet from nose to rear bolts by. A fucking cougar! Not chasing the deer, but fleeing with them.

"Yeah!" Dean yells. "You too?"

"Yeah!"

Somehow amidst the panic, a small relief breaks in Dean as they run together. Around their feet but never under them are squirrels, hares, raccoons. There's a mountain hare dead in the path, unmarked but for a small explosion of blood at its nose. A heart attack from fear.

The baying gets louder and louder, and Dean doesn't know how long they can keep running, or if they should be running from this or hunting it.

Suddenly they reach a sloped rock face, something like a sixty-degree incline that he and Sam could never get a hold on. "Fuck," Sam says, and then Dean shoves him out of the path of a mountain goat running at them with lowered horns.

Instead of charging, though, the goat is more interested in climbing to escape the mad rush or whatever's chasing it. It clatters up, hard hooves making a cracking noise on the rock as it winds its way up the slope. Further up Dean can see rams that have made it up further along, where the slope is less steep. He grabs Sam's arm to run over there, see if they can find a place where they won't get trampled or run into a bear.  
Dean had enough sense to grab the gun and his boots and pull those on before the stampede became apparent. Sam's got the same.

Though adrenaline is still running through Dean's veins and he could keep running he thinks, they're hunters, not prey, and they've come here to find what's driving men and beasts mad up in the mountain towns. 

Anyway, what's the likelihood that it's worse than whatever else they've faced before?

They try to find something to crouch behind, hoping for some element of surprise, but no dice. Galloping towards them on the tails of wolves is a giant man astride a giant black horse, lean but heavy-hooved, probably as big as a Clydesdale but fast as a Mustang.

The man astride it has antlers that stretch to the sides and back like an elk's, and big hairy shoulders like a bear's. Dean blinks, half-expecting it all to be some elaborate costume, but the rider on his horse moves fluidly, his eyes shining large and yellow like an owl's, staring right at them. 

Dean is very convinced.

Crouched in the vee of the man's – beast's? - legs is a pale dog with red eyes and ears, draped over the horse's withers. It looks like a lap dog, dwarfed by the bulk of the man and horse that carry him. 

_You pursued the hunt,_ a rumbling howl of a voice says.

"It kinda pursued us, actually," Dean says, standing upright as hiding is no longer an option. He's unnerved but not about to back down.

Sam shushes him, but he's also standing tall, moving closer than Dean, eyes wide.

_The hunters may become the hunted._

Dean feels himself being drawn into those yellow eyes when Sam shouts, "Wait!"

Dean blinks and realizes he's nearly crouched on the ground, poised on his fingertips on the hard-packed dirt.

"I know you," Sam says, and Dean doesn't like the sound of that. "I recognize your face."

The hunter seems amused, though Dean can't see a smile on his face. _Yes._

Wow, freakin' figures every freak they'd run into knows Sam. His kid brother's got a real unsavory destiny lined up.

_You sheltered a hound of mine on your hearth years ago._

Then Dean remembers – the man on the motorcycle whose dogs ran with him, who came to get the one they found in the woods that Sam wanted to adopt. Just like that dog up there on the horse. This guy? _This_ is the grungy hippie easy rider?

"And you said you owe me a favor for it," Sam said.

The hunter laughs. It sounds like a rockslide. _Yes!_ he booms. _Your mind's like a steel trap._  
Dean's looking at Sam, uncertain about this calling in favors business, especially these days. Sam looks pigheaded as ever. It would be insane to think that this is what Sam was banking on when he found this hunt for them, but Dean tries to never underestimate his devastatingly smart little brother.

"Then I want to cash it in. Please," Sam says. The hunter listens, unmoving, but his horse paws at the ground. "Let us join the hunt with you. Forever."

The hunter laughs and Dean gapes. "What the fuck, Sam?"

_Let me guess. You have reasons._

"We're hunters, we'd be good at it. There's nothing, no family tying us to this world. And we'd like to escape for a while."

_Your brother's soul is forfeit to hell._

"How did you know?" Dean asks.

The Hunter turns to him. _My hounds smell it on you. Brothers, hunters and touched by the wild you may be, but Sam._ He turns his unblinking round stare to Sam. _You are clever, but the Wild Hunt can allow no reason._

Sam opens his mouth to speak again, and Dean hits him on the arm. It's his turn to hiss "Shh!" at his stupid brother.

But Sam doesn't even flinch, asking, "Are your hounds hellhounds?"

_They can smell a soul marked for hell. But these are my dogs and mine alone._

"Then my favor is this: in eight months, hell hounds will come for my brother's soul." He nods at Dean and Dean looks at him, eyes wide, unable to speak. "Please, will you lend us a hound then to keep the hellhounds at bay?"

 _I don't keep calendars, but you have made a friend in my pack._ The dog on the horse's shoulders looks up, and when the Hunter nods it jumps down, and runs over to sniff Sam's hand. It's shoulder is as tall as Sam's hip – enormous, far more enormous than Dean had remembered. There's probably something to that. _Call her when the time comes, and she will hear you._

"How do I call her?" Sam asks.

_As you did when you knew her. She'll remember, though she is only one hound, and hell may send many. You have your favor. And now: join me in the hunt._

"We'd really rather not," Dean says.

"Is that… we really have our own hunts to get back to –"

 _You are hunters_ , the Hunter says. Dean thinks the bellowing voice might be amused. It's hard to tell. _You belong in my party._

Dean finds himself bracing against the ground like Olympic runners do before launching on their sprints. Then he's running, swept by what feels like a wave of dogs, not overwhelming but carrying him between them for moments that his feet don't even touch the ground. When the dogs disperse and pass him by he finds himself hurtling on far faster than he's ever run in his life. He and Sam weave around each other, Sam catching up to pass with the dog he knows running with him, then Dean winding the other way around a tree, jumping down from a rock, and ahead of Sam now. He doesn't know where he's going, he just goes.

Then they catch up to the deer.

Another dog - Sam's is back by their sides, weaving between them – catches one of the deer by the hind hoof and sends it stumbling. They veer off to the left, and then the dog bites into the meaty flank, making the deer fall and twist and kick. Then it leans and bites the dog, and the dog yowls, and Dean sees blood and fangs in the deer's mouth as he runs on past.

A deer nips at Dean's heels behind him, and he nearly falls, but keeps on running just as Sam's dog lunges and tears into its throat.

They can't stop to watch, they have to keep running, and the rams are with them now, keeping pace, dangerous with their huge horns. Dean hopes to high heaven they aren't interested in tossing him or Sam.  
They catch up to the dogs somehow, a river of them running joyously, red tongues and eyes and teeth flashing in the morning light. The mass of them separate Sam and Dean from a bear, and a big cat jumps down from a tree and throws the dogs into a fury.

Sam and Dean keep running. Dean's eyes are flying everywhere as they run over the ground, through the trees, branches whipping and barely feeling it in the adrenaline, sweat in his eyes and the little cuts stinging, but still running.

He's certain they're being herded by the dogs, but as long as Sam is in sight it'll be all right. He just can't lose Sam.

Then they are in a clearing with all the other animals dispersed, and Sam pulls ahead, further ahead than he did before. Dean shouts and Sam looks back and laughs, and Dean laughs too, and bares his teeth and wants to set them on Sam's skin. He wants to rough his little brother up and mark him, nobody's prey, all his.

Their shirts are ripped from thorns and branches and antlers, so they tear them more. Their boots and jeans are heavy so they kick and cut them off with their knives. Still, Sam is ahead, Sam is nearly too fast for him, so Dean tackles him to catch up.

They go falling and rolling down a slope, bending and crushing seedlings, then get up. Now Dean is the one fleeing and Sam pursuing, and Sam catches him and they roll again. The deer are still streaming through the trees but they don't care, fixed on grappling with each other, each of them pushing to pin the other, mostly naked and then naked as the day they were born.

Pushing and jockeying, panting and laughing, putting their mouths on each other, nipping necks, the sharp sensation of pain new and thrilling. There's dirt everywhere, they smear on each other's skin, scratching each other down the back and arching under the touch.

Sam climbs on top of Dean's back and Dean tries to roll back over, but Sam just rolls him back and pushes himself onto Dean, both of them naked, every scrap of clothing gone now. Sam's rubbing and thrusting, dick slipping into the crevice between Dean's ass and thighs, sweat providing no give, still rough. Sam's own cock is dripping to make it slick enough for him, enough for Dean to feel the wetness there, rough and bare and hot-skinned and god –

He's not fighting against Sam, he's pushing back, clenching his legs tight together as Sam scrabbles at his thighs and back. Sam fucks in and out, the dry rasping friction burning, Dean bucking underneath in pleasure.

Dean's hands are clawing at the dirt in front of him, mind a white static roar as visceral sensation takes over, no thought for his own pleasure, just to reach back and pull Sam's hair. Sam's intent on gripping Dean's hips so tight and digging his nails into the flesh there without thought, keeping Dean flush and close, leaving scratches and crescents and finger-shaped bruises. They are yelping and grunting like animals, raw inarticulate noises tearing up their throats.

As Sam comes he fucks Dean through it and Dean growls, grabs Sam's hand and puts it on his cock, makes Sam fist him and two-handed together they bring him off hard and merciless and all the better for it. The fiery burn feels better than Dean could ever imagine. His throat is raw, and he bucks Sam off and rolls him over and feels Sam's collarbone and ribs and hands with his teeth, and on, and on, till both of them collapse on the forest floor, sleepily kneading each other's flesh like animals when they pass out.

-

When they come to, they're groaning and naked and so very, very sore. Dean doesn't look at Sam, not right in the eye, as he assesses the situation. He winces as he tries to sit up. Sam is wincing too. Dean can tell out of the corner of his eye.

Both of them are naked as the day they were born and unable to hide from each other. Dean figures there isn't enough time left for him to make hiding from Sam worth it.

The sun is low in the sky by now; they have no idea how long or far they ran, how long they were passed out on the forest floor for, and they have no clue where they are. They're both covered in dirt and scratches, some the work of passing brush, some the work of each other. Dean sees the bites on Sam's neck and realizes, _I did that_. No clothes or shoes to be seen.

The forest is dead silent, as if it's been emptied of everything and they're the only ones left. It might just be true.

To get back they retrace the path of the hunt along the signs of snapped branches, crushed foliage, upturned earth. They run across their shoes eventually, mostly intact luckily, putting them on barefoot despite blisters. There are shreds of their clothing but nothing wearable, and when they find their tent trampled and torn, it's nearly completely dark.

The darkness covers their nakedness as they make their way back to the car.

Driving back, Dean can hardly think of the near miss, the hope that Sam thinks he's won for Dean, the bizarre wonder of it all. He expects to feel fear and shame, but there's no room for that either. Last night he blew his little brother and they got off together, he couldn't stop himself and he couldn't stop Sam. He hadn't wanted to and he can't, just can't regret it

Yet he can't help but feel the relief overwhelm him, that though he and Sam haven't resolved anything there still feels like there has been some sort of resolution, the exhaustion after the hunt alleviating the tension that had been building between them and souring the past few weeks, and even further back over the years.

The burning he feels in his body absolves him, momentarily.

-

When they find a motel with a room, not having spoken the whole way, Dean says, "First shower" like a reflex. He refuses to think about Sam, what Sam wants, how he would think. This shower is for him.

But his hands on his own body as he rinses the dirt away remind him of Sam's hands on him, gentle the night before, rough in the frenzy. There aren't many hands he's familiar with besides his own foremost, and Sam's.

He feels like an island.

Then he hears the bathroom door open. The shower curtain is shut so he doesn't know or care if Sam has to piss or brush his teeth or washcloth himself in the sink, but instead the curtain opens and Sam puts a foot in the tub.

"Sam!" Dean says, indignant, but Sam just glances at him, steps the rest of the way in, and closes the curtain behind him. He's naked, like Dean is naked, and they may have both been naked for the last, oh, entire day, but Sam's body is close now and they're just tired, looking and feeling like themselves again.

"Hey," Sam says, and Dean's wobbling unsteadily, reaching out and catching Sam's shoulder.

Sam moves his foot between Dean's to stand closer, grabs on to Dean's waist to steady them both. He's looking Dean in the eye now, or Dean is looking back at last. Sam's got a small smile on his face, a layer of exhaustion, and under that, desire.

Dean says again, nervous, heated, "Sam."

Sam kisses him.


End file.
